The Architecture of the Commons: A New Path of Contemporary Logos and Praxis Event

Lecture 5
IKA Lecture Room R211a, 2nd floor
Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Schillerplatz 3

The Architecture of the Commons:
A New Path of Contemporary Logos and Praxis

Although many architects and urban designers still base their work on traditional modi operandi, some others are beginning to form collectives, exchange labor and create new forms of practice based on transversal methodologies. Developments such as the Occupy movements and the trans-local solidarity networks are opening new paths of design.

In this last lecture we will explore recent attempts to articulate an architecture of the commons in contemporary architectural and urban projects. Our focus will be on these projects that entail and activate the various aspects of the commons, as discussed in the previous lectures. We will be looking upon the discourses, but also the methods and tools that contemporary architectural and urban practices use to articulate an architecture of the commons. We will investigate if the commons has the potential to provide a conceptual framework and to suggest an approach that offers the possibility of a more inclusive and equitable form of city-making.
This lecture will argue that the city can be understood as the ultimate common: a collective social, cultural and material construct that is composed by and for its inhabitants. It will probe into questions as: Can we in future regard the interventions of architects and urban designers as the unlocking and management of important communal sources? Based on the notions that have been explored previously, it aims to construct a new understanding of architectural and urban design as an intervention upon and along the lines of common resources. Engagement with collective knowledge and practices are part of such an architectural approach.