Forelesning
Critical Spatial Practice VII: Atelier d’architecture autogeree
Doina Petrescu, professor of architecture and design activism at the University of Sheffield and Paris-based architect Constantin Petcou will give an open lecture on "Designing, Building and Struggling for Urban Commons".
Place: Auditorium, Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Please ask the reception for instructions).
Designing, Building and Struggling for Urban Commons
The question of the commons is at the heart of current discussions on democracy. According to Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri, the contemporary revolutionary project is concerned with capturing, diverting, appropriating and reclaiming these commons as a key constituent process(1). It is a re-appropriation and at the same time a reinvention. This undertaking needs new categories and new institutions, new forms of management and governance, and new spaces and actors – an entire infrastructure that is both material and virtual. Architects and designers have an important role to play in setting up such infrastructure for commons.
Questions and findings, conflicts and negotiations within this approach will be presented across a number of projects as well as the role of the architects/designers as agents within the process of urban commoning. All these are understood as key challenges within a more democratic approach to public space.
Doina Petrescu is professor of architecture and design activism at the University of Sheffield and co-founder of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa). She is the editor of Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (2007) and co-editor of Architecture and Resilience (2018), The Social (Re)Production of Architecture (2017), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (2009) and Architecture and Participation (2005).
Constantin Petcou is a Paris-based architect whose work stresses the intersection between architecture, urbanism, strategic design and semiotics. He is co-founder and director of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa), a professional organization which conducts actions and research on participatory urbanism and architecture which involve local residents in self-managing projects in their neighborhood, engaging in social and ecological practices, and initiating civic resilience networks. Aaa has been laureate of Innovation in Politics Awards 2017 category Ecology, Zumtobel Prize for Sustainability and Humanity 2012, recipient of the Curry Stone Design Prize 2011, the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2010 and the Prix Grand Public des Architectures contemporaines en Métropole Parisienne 2010. aaa is also publisher of the book series –ACT supporting the dissemination of activist practices : Urban ACT (2007), Trans-Local ACT (2010) R-Urban ACT (2015), Learn to ACT(2017).
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(1) Ravel, J. and A. Negri (2008) Inventer le commun des hommes (Inventing the common), Multitudes No. 31. Paris: Éditions Amsterdam.
Critical Spatial Practice is organized by MFA Art and Public Space (MAPS).