In the context of the ETH Zürich Department of Architecture, and in collaboration with Unmasking Space, Office Party hosted a workshop exploring parties as a site for the generation of critical and counter-discourses in the institution. The workshop took the form of a party itself, deploying large crowds, loud music, and dynamic lighting to allow collective discussion to build through personal and private conversation. In this capacity, we propose the party holds potential for exercising a more horizontal process of knowledge production and validation than that enforced through typical classroom hierarchies.

The workshop took place over the course of two days:

Day 1: Party (Open to the public)

The party’s price of admission was the completion of a reading selected from a predetermined bibliography that explores the role of collective gathering in relation to urgent concerns of architectural space-making, gender and sexual identity, and the politics of pedagogy. Party-goers were encouraged to discuss their texts with each other and “party-crashers” as they simultaneously reflected on their own experience partying (dancing, talking, eating, drinking, etc.). All guests were encouraged to write notes, comments, and reflections directly on different elements of the party decoration (napkins, confetti, cups, plates) throughout the night. They would then discard them on the floor of the party, accumulating ideas with the layers of garbage.

Day 2: Clean Up (Restricted to participants of the Unmasking Space initiative)

The second meeting was a cleaning event. Students of Unmasking Space were invited back the morning after the party to clean up the mess. As they collected the notes that were discarded the night prior, they read anonymous reflections on the event and fragments of discussions that were left behind. The notes were collected and used to structure a group discussion on the successes and failures (or the potential benefits and dangers) of considering the party a pedagogical space.

The results of the workshop were exhibited in the gta Foyer at ETH Zürich.