welcome to
bienvenidx a
EASA Shanzhai,
Benidorm 2024
EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly) is a non-profit, decentralized network, organized and led by volunteers, where students and young creatives collaborate in a horizontal learning process at the intersection of education and practice.
The yearly EASA event, organized each year at a new location by a different team, gathers around 400 international participants and just about 30 workshops in a two-week-long summer Architecture residency. During this time, students and professionals form a self-organised community. They work, learn, rest, cook, eat, clean, and live together.
Bringing students to a certain context, defined by the location and theme of the assembly, they are encouraged to raise architectural questions themselves and investigate them through the eyes of all European cultures simultaneously. Being their own educators, students then bring them to reality.
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this year’s theme...
Shānzhài is a Chinese neologism literally meaning “mountain fortress”. Its contemporary use refers to counterfeit products and the subculture surrounding them. More broadly, in Architecture and the Arts, Shānzhài is understood as a grassroots social and cultural collaborative process that challenges and deconstructs mainstream notions of authenticity, and authorship, using systematic copying as a democratising tool.
As a decentralised open-source system where individuals repurpose, remix, and build on each other’s work, EASA Shānzhài will operate as a bottom-up ecosystem where everyone can access the EASA’s Archive and add to the repertoire of knowledge commons.
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The yearly EASA event, organized each year at a new location by a different team, gathers around 400 international participants and just about 30 workshops in a two-week-long summer Architecture residency. During this time, students and professionals form a self-organised community. They work, learn, rest, cook, eat, clean, and live together.
Bringing students to a certain context, defined by the location and theme of the assembly, they are encouraged to raise architectural questions themselves and investigate them through the eyes of all European cultures simultaneously. Being their own educators, students then bring them to reality.
this year’s theme...
山寨;
/Shān - zhài /Shānzhài is a Chinese neologism literally meaning “mountain fortress”. Its contemporary use refers to counterfeit products and the subculture surrounding them. More broadly, in Architecture and the Arts, Shānzhài is understood as a grassroots social and cultural collaborative process that challenges and deconstructs mainstream notions of authenticity, and authorship, using systematic copying as a democratising tool.
As a decentralised open-source system where individuals repurpose, remix, and build on each other’s work, EASA Shānzhài will operate as a bottom-up ecosystem where everyone can access the EASA’s Archive and add to the repertoire of knowledge commons.
