A Loudreading in Nueva Yol

Between 1919 and 1920, Puerto Rican anarcho-syndicalist and utopian author Luisa Capetillo lived in New York, where she helped organize workers in the city’s tobacco factories while operating a boarding house and a vegetarian restaurant. In her practice, food, loud reading, and activism coalesced in an anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist spirit.

One hundred years later, LOUDREADERS present A Loudreading in Nueva Yol at the National Academy of Design—a performance of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist worldmaking. Through the sharing of critical and emancipatory narratives, loudreading is used here to activate solidary imaginaries.

RESERVATIONS: Admission is free but reservations are required.

ACCESSIBILITY: This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. To request free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service, email your request at least three weeks in advance of the event to [email protected].

About the Speakers

Christopher Rey Pérez is a poet from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. His first book, gauguin’s notebook, received the 2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize from Lake Forest College. He is also the author of Fayuca, a book on markets and movement, with diSONARE Editorial in Mexico City, and Future Tourism, a chapbook with Sputnik & Fizzle on love, travel, and class. With Gabriel Finotti, he publishes the multilingual and nomadic bookwork, Dolce Stil Criollo. He also forms part of Post-Novis, an alternative project of architectural education and practice.

Daniel Jonas Roche is news editor of The Architect's Newspaper and faculty member at The New School. He is co-author of Antifascist Architecture (Park Books, 2026) and co-curator of a multi-year research project about workforce housing architect Herman Jessor. Roche's writing has been featured in eflux, Brooklyn Rail, New York Review of Architecture, and other outlets.

Rose Mary Florián Rodríguez is a Black Puerto Rican architect and artist whose work explores the intersections of race, colonialism, and feminism through radical world-building and decolonial practices. She believes design can disrupt hierarchies and provide space for those who are misrepresented. Rose has a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her current research, Unearthed Structures, examines the overlooked building practices of enslaved African technologists in the Caribbean. Through video, performance, and sculpture, Florián reimagines identity as fluid and expansive, deconstructing imposed narratives of self.

Founded in 2008 by Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia, WAI Architecture Think Tank is a planetary studio dedicated to critical spatial practices and alternative design education. Operating across Puerto Rico, France, and the USA, and today joined by Ema Yuizarix, WAI also co-leads LOUDREADERS, an alternative trade school, and Post-Novis, an anti-disciplinary collective. Their work has been exhibited at the National Academy of Design, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Centre Pompidou, MoMA, and MAAT Lisbon. They are authors of Universal Principles of Architecture (Rockport Publishers, 2023), A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education (Loudreaders Publishers, 2021), and Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto (NAi010 Publishers, 2020), among others.