DIA 2015/2016
Thesis Studio
Prof. Ivan Kucina
City Commons
Thesis Subject
This project integrates spatial and social aspects of urban
regeneration by connecting two relevant issues: renewal of the abandoned
historical buildings/spaces and their transformation into city commons. Rather
than restoration and simple provision of the old buildings through new usage, it
promotes the transformation of unused spaces into places for collaboration,
sharing, collective ownership, and cooperative economy. It claims for the social
interaction among engaged citizens that are managing commons as a device for the equitable
and sustainable redevelopment of their city.
Studies
of the city commons have resulted in a range of definitions. In this project a more
design-centric definition of the concept will be used, one that connects the city
commons to the complex, systemic, and democratic features of urban and
architectural space. Depending on the scale, commons are related to left-over plots
or unused buildings, depending on ownership commons could occupy abandoned
private properties or wasted public spaces, depending on management, commons
could be developed by the city authorities, civic organizations or altruistic
individuals.
Creating
situations of social interaction that transform unused spaces is a critical
position assumed in this project. A rise in city commons hopes to reclaim the city for the
public good, providing a participatory alternative to exclusive market-based
speculations. When commons does occur,
it can overflow deprived context in which it is taking place, generating emergent
and vibrant environment.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2653084
http://www.ccri.ac.uk/what-makes-a-commons-cities-and-the-concept-of-urban-commons/
http://makecity.berlin/6486-2/?lang=en
http://www.iasc-commons.org/conferences/thematic/2015-iasc-thematic-conference-urban-commons
http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Commons-Rethinking-Materiality-Normative/dp/1138017248
https://books.google.it/books?id=UlDyCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=city+as+urban+commons&source=bl&ots=PQxPFq7AgN&sig=k2Uu8Ei0BECeD6hC5lxZLXRWONM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwCWoVChMIndD654SkxwIVBtcUCh1giAn7#v=onepage&q=city%20as%20urban%20commons&f=false
http://makecity.berlin/6486-2/?lang=en
http://www.iasc-commons.org/conferences/thematic/2015-iasc-thematic-conference-urban-commons
http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Commons-Rethinking-Materiality-Normative/dp/1138017248
https://books.google.it/books?id=UlDyCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=city+as+urban+commons&source=bl&ots=PQxPFq7AgN&sig=k2Uu8Ei0BECeD6hC5lxZLXRWONM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwCWoVChMIndD654SkxwIVBtcUCh1giAn7#v=onepage&q=city%20as%20urban%20commons&f=false
Collaboration
During the year students will transform
unused historical buildings and left-over plots to facilitate civic
organizations, collective enterprises, and cooperatives in two post-socialist
cities in central Europe – Leipzig (in the winter semester) and in Prague (in
the summer semester). Both case studies will be developed in collaboration with
local partners – ArchitecturApotheke, architecture collective from Leipzig http://www.architekturapotheke.de/index.html
and Archip, architecture institute in Prague http://www.archip.eu/.
Leipzig
and Prague has many abandoned buildings/spaces that could be brought back to
life by citizens´ engagements. This project seeks to reintegrate citizens and
their city by installing a system of transformed building/spaces that will
inspire citizens to engage in reusing their city. By mediating between citizens’ urge to
collaborate and work together and the city that is providing unused spaces, concept
of city commons opens up new understandings of urban
collectivities, addressing a range of questions about urban diversity, urban
governance, urban belonging, urban sexuality, urban subcultures, and urban
poverty.
Objectives
Project
is looking for redesigns of abandoned buildings and left-over plots through which
the existing potential or fictional civic organizations, cooperatives and
enterprises could take shape. They will have to have the capacity to continually transform and maintain their space by working
for the public interest, either by providing cohousing, public services, or by
managing cultural and social production.
Transformation of
abandoned historical buildings into city commons seeks to protect architecture
heritage while looking for innovative proposals in spatial and social
organization. It includes buildings/spaces
of the lowest category of heritage protection that allows changes of building
structure or facade, as well as various extensions and additions. It also
includes all those buildings/spaces that are so ruined that they could be demolished
and exchanged with the new one of similar size. Transformed
buildings/spaces cannot be fully adapted to any conventional
typology because of the multiple usage and openness for changing.
Design rational
should refer to the following issues:
What
is the social process of commoning that would take place through the design?
How
would the design be sustained?
What
kind of social, cultural or material value would it create for the commoners
that use it?
What
is the role that architects could have in enabling communities to work together?
How
much of the design should be concerned with space itself and how much
should it be the organizational structure that allows commoning to take place?
Activities
Wintersemester- Leipzig
Research inquiry - Identify
abandoned building/space that could benefit its users better through being
collective management or occupation, indicate social
group, collect data, map the processes, make insight into public
services, create an infographic
ReDesign engagement – Design
for performative, organizational, architectural, and urban, intervention that
enables civic organizations and enterprises to enact common rights to transform
and use their space productively and collaboratively. Make
programmatic diagram, define spatial sequences, imagine architecture diagram, develop prototypes.
Summersemester – Prague
Research inquiry - Identify
abandoned building/space that could benefit its users better through being
collective management or occupation, indicate social group, collect data, map the
processes, make insight into public services, create an infographic
ReDesign engagement – Design
for performative, organizational, architectural, and urban, intervention that
enables civic organizations and enterprises to enact common rights to use this
space productively and collaboratively. Make a programmatic diagram, define
spatial sequences, imagine architecture diagram, develop prototypes
Research on abandoned buildings/spaces in the historical center of Prague
will be developed during the winter semester at Archip. During the summer semester
Archip master students will redesign cases from Leipzig and Prague, while DIA
students will work on cases in Pargue. We hope to have stimulative visits and
exchange during these parallel activities.
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