About this Event
In the 1960s, under the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco and with the support of the United States, Spain’s Mediterranean coast was developed into an international night-leisure destination where some of the first discotheques in the world emerged. This lecture examines this little-known historical episode, focusing on the appearance of these unprecedented architectures and the body politics they carried with them.
Under the direction of the technocratic authoritarian government, technologies developed during the world wars were repurposed for leisure. Light, sound and psychotropic technologies were introduced into the design of the Spanish discotheque, providing a multimedia environment addressed to the masses. Channelling youth, music and dance cultures, the discotheques operated as multisensory instruments enabling new forms of representation and production of the body.
On the Spanish dancefloors of the late 1960s and early 1970s, millions of visitors arriving from across Europe were introduced to the desiring regimes of libidinal capitalism, generating cultural categories such as coolness and difference that still resonate today. The genealogy of the Spanish discotheque allows us to trace the transformation of what had the potential to be spaces of collective emancipation into sites of managed affect and consumption, where the biopolitics of liberalisation and its accompanying soft-power structures were rehearsed.
The lecture will be introduced and responded to by the Professor of Architecture and design historian Cat Rossi.
Pol Esteve Castelló is an architect, researcher and educator. Their practice explores the relationship between space, technology, and the body, with a particular focus on non-canonical histories, collective architectures, non-normative bodies, and aesthetics as a political tool. They are the author of the book Arquitecturas Peligrosas (Puente Editores, 2025), a collection of essays that explores sexuality, comfort, gender, pleasure, and health in relation to architecture. They are co-founder of studio GOIG. They teach in the AA Diploma Programme and the Chair of Architecture and Care in ETH Zurich.
Cat Rossi is Professor of Architecture at UCA Canterbury. A design historian, her interests include post-war Italian design and architecture, craft, club culture, feminism, and environmentalism. Her research outputs include Night Fever: Designing Club Culture 1960 to Today (Vitra Design Museum, 2018) and Designing Craft in Italy (MUP, 2015).
Image: Interior view of the discotheque Maddox in Platja d’Aro, Costa Brava, Spain, 1967.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
