ELa
The Ecole Libre d’architecture inaugural session ran in May 2018 over 3+ weeks as an event inviting free thought, dialogue, debate and dissent through exposure to a variety of practices in and around architecture. ELa as event and experience swerves around the body of the commodification of education moving beyond the idea of an institution. Freed of pedagogical hierarchies, students and teachers become researchers, gathering participation from as diverse a base as possible, relying on Peer to Peer exchange as central to the strength the Ecole’s success and future.
Liberated from the constraints of traditional architectural education and professional dictates the research is enabled by free and critical enquiry of practices and trajectories. It is via the freedom of unscripted learning and of the exploration of conditions of life the existential necessity of research is realised, leading to the possibility of transformative experience.
Through workshops and exposure to the city - from within and outside architecture ELa offered a critical understanding of the world. Employing the human, built and natural resources of Paris - as facilitators of discourse and collaborations.
The culmination of ELa involves a shift from Paris to Venice for a free Assembly at the vernissage of the Biennale of architecture.
ELa is free - not for profit, no fees, no tuition, no salaries, no assessment with no qualifications offered and It is much more, an open forum for free thought, for shared ideas, true learning and discovery.
Inaugural session ran 1 - 24 May 2018
ELa was conceived following the experiences of FSA - The Free School of Architecture, founded in Los Angeles by architect and educator Peter Zellner, at its inaugural six-week programme in June and July 2017.
ELa the Ecole Libre d’architecture is run by and exists through state of grace (the research arm of robert grace architecture) , supported by the ELa advisors.
It is envisaged that the cohort of researchers from the first Ecole Libre d’architecture will become the generators of further researches in its future iterations allowing for diverse and independent architectural voices to flower.