Branner and Stump Traveling Fellows | Architecture Exhibition

Free and open to the public

Abandoned factories become concert halls. Slaughterhouses transform into cultural centers. Military barracks evolve into autonomous communities. Cut. Copy. Paste. documents how European counterculture has shaped, and been shaped by, the architectural spaces it inhabits.

Across 15 European cities, this project examines the relationship between alternative cultures and their physical environments. From London’s historic punk venues to Copenhagen’s Christiania, Berlin’s post-wall cultural landscape to Vienna’s converted locomotive factory, the research investigates how communities have transformed forgotten buildings into vibrant centers of resistance and collective identity.

The findings are compiled into a DIY-style publication that mirrors the ethos of the spaces it documents, combining raw photography, drawn details, and collaged imagery. This project illuminates an architectural canon that exists in the margins of history, yet powerfully shapes urban experience — spaces where architecture itself becomes an act of resistance.

“What makes these spaces radical isn’t just their history of occupation — it’s their constant evolution. Yesterday’s factory becomes today’s concert hall becomes tomorrow’s something else entirely,” says a cultural worker in Vienna.

Redefining Site: Understanding the Environmental, Sociopolitical, and Metaphysical Qualities of Space

Site analysis in standard architecture practice analyzes the physical conditions of the site- assessing qualities such as topography, sun path, and square footage. However, at a moment in which we are confronted with the looming threat of climate change and a violent, increasingly fascist, political movement this research asks for a redefinition. These works situate the site at the intersection of past and future, positing a consideration of space through climate analysis, sociopolitical histories, and the memories of everyday people. 

This research reflects an ongoing meditation on the question of the architect’s role in shaping more just and sustainable cities. 

For millennia, civilizations have been organized around their relationship to water, thermal hot springs, and subsequently bathing structures. Inside the architectural framework of bathhouses, their spaces are multifaceted, centering on more than just basic hygiene, but also on communication and care, becoming integral facilitators of daily communal life. In doing so, knowledge and compassion are disseminated across populations, fostering further communication, community, and unity through the act of washing not only one’s body but also cleansing one’s mind and soul.

However, as the world industrialized, energy systems like electricity and water were harnessed and integrated into homes, leading to the widespread adoption of indoor plumbing by the late 1940s. The integration of systems in domestic life reflected a broader paradigm shift in society and architecture in industrialized nations, one that prioritized the individual and fundamentally altered how communities created and used architectural space. Because of this, public bathing gradually declined, first along socioeconomic lines and then almost entirely.

This societal and architectural shift has culminated in our current digital age, one that is increasingly precarious and has led to a growing universal sense of isolation, something fully exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in response to this, “Bodies in Common” revisits the architectural typology of the bathhouse, specifically the Japanese Onsen and Sento, the Turkish Hamam, and Finnish Sauna. In doing so, documenting these spaces and positioning them as a radical form of architecture, in opposition

to our current societal, economic, and political realities. In doing so, this project aims to highlight the idiosyncratic nature of bathing spaces, one where multitudes of humans gather, strip themselves of any signifier of self, and nakedly accept a position of vulnerability. In doing so, embracing the warmth of water and community in a rare act of collective intimacy.

If you require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact Monica Renner.