The visionary project New Babylon (1956–1974) by Constant Nieuwenhuys constitutes a radical reconfiguration of architecture as a ludic, planetary-scale environment, predicated upon the anticipated liberation of humanity from labour through technological automation. As outlined in the introductory text (p. 6), Constant posits a future wherein social life becomes wholly oriented toward play, creativity, and experiential exploration, thereby transforming the city into a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) . The theoretical foundation, developed in collaboration with Guy Debord and the Situationist International, advances unitary urbanism—a synthesis of architecture, art, and social practice—designed to generate ever-changing “situations” rather than fixed functions. Spatially, New Babylon is composed of interconnected sectors elevated above the ground, forming a labyrinthine, continuously reconfigurable network that encourages nomadic movement and psychogeographical drift. As detailed in later sections (pp. 15–16), the emergence of homo ludens—a post-work subject liberated from production—replaces the static, work-bound inhabitant with a creative agent who actively reshapes the environment through mutable elements such as light, colour, and spatial partitions . This case study reveals an architecture not of stability but of perpetual transformation, where disorientation becomes a methodological tool for emancipation. Ultimately, Constant’s New Babylon transcends conventional urbanism by positing architecture as an infinite field of becoming, wherein space is no longer inhabited but continuously produced through collective, playful agency. Nieuwenhuys, C. (2015) New Babylon. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
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LACALLE emerges in 2010 as a performative-urban dispositif grounded in a precise political intuition: to reclaim the street as a space of poetic agency and civic audition. Conceived by Anto Lloveras under the experimental umbrella of Tomoto Films, the project situates itself within the lineage of critical urban practices that treat the city not as backdrop but as interlocutor. LACALLE operates through minimal yet incisive gestures—walking, voicing, amplifying—that reinsert affect and presence into increasingly regulated public space. Its title explicitly invokes Henri Lefebvre’s notion of the “right to the city,” translating that theoretical claim into an embodied, sonic practice. Rather than staging protest through mass or spectacle, LACALLE opts for precision: the voice as tool, sound as inscription, movement as authorship. The project thus reframes political action as a form of spatial listening, where attention becomes resistance. Poetry is not represented but enacted, redistributed into the urban fabric through fragile, temporary acts that nonetheless leave perceptual traces. In this sense, LACALLE proposes a micro-political aesthetics, one attuned to infrastructure, memory, and the overlooked thresholds of everyday urban life.
