The Earth is a Tree Full of Poems

Loudreading fictions, forms, and futures in the Caribbean

Led by Nathalie Frankowski, Architecture, and Cruz Garcia, Architecture

Students will reflect, research, and design narrative architectures, landscapes, interiors, publications, artifacts, and installations that engage with questions of presentation and representation, sustainability, resilience, social entrepreneurship, and future imaginaries in the archipelago of Puerto Rico.

The studio will study and develop spaces, architectures, landscapes, artifacts, and media that consider:

• beautiful beaches with violent histories of occupation
• self-organized community centers providing renewable energy to whole towns
• powerful posters and risograph zines published by feminist collectives
• military structures repurposed for collective practices of care
• ancient caves as sites of future resistance
• forests as a radical form of historical preservation
• indigenous artifacts that challenge official historical narratives
• underwater landscapes that narrate time and climate
• farms and factories transformed in loudreading stages