Abstract of Radical Discotheques: Aesthetics of Decontextualization

Undergraduate research, advised by Lucia Allais
2019

The new architectural genre of discotheque design situated social activity within spaces of disorientation, becoming utopian ladnscapes hidden within abandoned quotidian spaces (factories, warehouses, engine-repair shops) of the city. These anti-functionalist, anti-structuralist discotheques condensed light, sound, and bodies into a synthesis of revived space. The auditory and visual isolation required to operate discotheques allowed for the suspension of reality, unfettered architettura radicale, and escape. A new architectural typology for the 1960s, the discotheque became the three-dimensional extension of the surreal image, a transition from architectural design to architectural phenomenology. If architettura radicale critiqued through the surreal image, it created new alternatives through the surreal space of the discotheque.