Parque Paradigma
DEPARTMENT OF ANEXACT STUDIES
Project: Paradigm Park
Members: With a variable composition, at the time of the Second Foundation of Paradigm Park, the Department of Anexact Studies was composed of: Nicolás Bacal, Jerónimo Bujman, Tomás Ciccola, Ariel Cusnir, Nicolás Agustín Da Mommio, Rosario Espinoza, Leopoldo Estol, Leandro Garber, Mercedes Sánchez Dansey, Julián Sardi, Yennyfer Tellez, Tomás Werthein, and Leonello Zambon.
Year of creation: 2018–future?
Location: La Zona, Villa Lynch Campus, National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF)
Contact: [email protected]
Instagram: @deanexactos
Publication: MUSEO magazine – Issue 8
Description origin
Paradigm Park is a project in a state of permanent re-foundation. Although its origin is linked to the encounter with a specific territory, it can now be said that it is not necessarily located in a fixed place, but rather revolves around a community: the Bachelor’s Degree in Electronic Arts at UNTREF.
The first foundation of the park took place in the vacant land next to the old railway warehouse where the program’s laboratories are housed, on the Villa Lynch campus. Although the land already belonged to the university, in 2018–2019 it still bore traces of the former rail club, revealed among grasses and weeds.
Venturing into this terrain—later dubbed “La Zona”—we encountered two rusted locomotives, stacked peculiarly one on top of the other. From this site, the idea emerged—among a self-organized group of faculty and students—to create a park that didn’t require a prior design but could emerge through the inhabiting of this land closely tied to our academic life. A site where spontaneous flora and fauna, remnants of an abandoned industrial past, and the university’s official plans for a future sports field all coexist.
Activities
Permanent Re-foundation
Collaborative Practices for a University Park
In 2018, the Electronic Arts program at UNTREF implemented a new experimental model. The traditional structure of isolated subjects was reconfigured into a series of workshops promoting horizontal, transdisciplinary learning.
In this context, both students and teachers felt the urgency to self-manage not only the implementation of the academic model but also the spatial architecture it required. Identifying internal borders, areas of indeterminacy, and extracurricular potentials led the community to reimagine the public use of campus edges and to propose shared forms of inhabitation—forms that simultaneously generate specific morphologies and uses.
A counterform to urban spaces designed and managed by specialists, practiced here through direct urbanism based on cooperation and shared use of land and ideas. Faculty and students organized under the name “Department of Anexact Studies” to propose a feasible agenda, including the creation of a university park as an experimental practice of habitability and territorial reflection.
Dificultades experimentadas
Difficulty and Possibility
First Foundational Displacement
Initial obstacles were legal and material. Institutional formalization attempts met resistance. A fence separated us from the university area under construction, which was inaccessible due to liability issues. We began constructing functional and symbolic park elements, storing them on campus since installation was prohibited.
We built a small wooden mobile library and a large sign using found metal parts. In April 2019, the university’s architecture department asked us to move the sign away from public circulation due to a forthcoming talk by Judith Butler. We seized the chance to relocate the sign to the heart of “La Zona,” marking the park’s first official founding with a slight, unexpected internal shift.
Second Foundation
On October 17, 2019, the park was re-founded through a new territorial displacement—this time from Villa Lynch to Palermo’s Tres de Febrero Park.
With Bienal Sur’s support, a public exhibition was held at the Eduardo Sívori Museum of Visual Arts, presenting mobile structures for conversations and gatherings. These micro-architectures later returned to the campus and remain part of the community’s mobile equipment.
This second foundation catalyzed collaborations with IF–Future Investigations and MACMO–Museum of Contemporary Art of Montevideo. This process is documented in MUSEO Issue No. 8, available on the MACMO website.
Micro-talks and Documentaries
The day after the second foundation, the 18-O uprising erupted in Santiago. Julián Sardi, head of the DEA’s (Department of Anexact Studies) newly created Office of International Affairs, traveled to document the revolt and a lecture series by Diego Sztulwark titled The Power of Existence.
From this exchange with Caja Negra, Lobo Suelto, Vitrina Dystópica, and Ratinoamérica Unida came a set of documentary records and collaborations, such as the talk Self-managing Chaos with Amador Fernández-Savater, part of the DEA’s ongoing micro-talk series.
Walks
Edges, internal borders, and peripheral exchanges have always guided the configuration of Paradigm Park.
Urban walks co-organized with Urbanismo Vivo, Jane’s Walks, and IF explored the zones of contact and separation between the university and the city, occasionally connecting the Future Investigations headquarters with the Villa Lynch campus.
These were titled In Search of Paradigm Park: A New Walk Along the Edges.
Future Challenges
Transmutations: Third, Fourth, and Future Re-foundations
By mid-2022, the official landscaping and sports field work gained momentum. The land was cleared and the locomotives removed. And yet, Paradigm Park continues to manifest itself in the ephemeral ruins that precede construction—a spectral presence still hovering over La Zona.
Expanded Materialities Lab
In 2023, just as we thought everything had ended, an invitation to lead the Expanded Materialities Lab as part of the official curriculum signaled a new phase.
This offered us the chance to build experimental structures and revisit Paradigm Park through academic exploration, with modest yet welcomed institutional support.
We assembled a broad team and opened workshop registration, clarifying that the lab’s mission was to reimagine Paradigm Park by other means.
FestivAE
The Electronic Arts Festival lives and grows through the voices of its self-managed student community, which strengthens each year.
The Expanded Materialities Lab’s efforts resonate deeply with the energy of FestivAE: modular tables that become bleachers or stages, portable screens, and a giant camera obscura transformed into a sound booth.
Paradigm Park’s foundational myth inhabits the self-organized spirit of the festival. At one point, we jokingly declared the Paradigm-Parkization of FestivAE—a mutual declaration of admiration and shared purpose.
It is only after this winding journey that the idea of Permanent Re-foundation emerges—not merely as a concept to follow, but as a living, expressive materiality.
