From 1967–85, CERFI, a self-managed research collective, brought together students, militant groups, and professionals from the areas of psychiatry, architecture, and education. Emerging from the political struggles that led to May ’68—and featuring prominent members such as Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault—the group set out to explore alternatives to existing forms of urban governance via the institutional programming of “collective equipment” (social, cooperative, and local facilities). As the first comprehensive examination of CERFI, this publication recovers the group’s investigations on architecture, institutional practices, and urban governance, as well as its unique methods of research. The publication is based on a series of in-depth interviews with members of CERFI, which will be complemented by translations of original and unpublished texts, together with a broad range of visual and documental materials.
