Master Design Studio

Envisioning the Architecture(s) of the Urban Commons 18-19

Hulya Ertas & Burak Pak

This studio aims at enabling urban commons through architecture. The student will explore architecture’s capacity for triggering social transformation based on solidarity, shared ownership, sustainable production and consumption and fair distribution, as well autonomy, self-determination and self- organization. To boost this capacity, the contemporary discussions on urban commons provides a wide and generous experimental ground for space-making. In a post-capitalist context, the students will rethink architectural design as a bottom-up solidarity spatial practice which critiques neoliberalism and imagine possibilities for alternative modes of shared living based on anti-capitalist values.

A dream of a world without property (either material or immaterial) rights. An architecture of unlocked doors, permeable walls, temporarily occupied and shared smart -in terms of ecology and economy, as well as technology- habitats; the co-creation of collective living, decision-making, care-taking based on interde-pendence of diverse subjectivities, skills, and motivations.

  • How can the urban commons be an inspiration for developing novel critical spatial approaches?
  • How can the concepts of the common good, critical spatial practice and post-capitalism, the agency of hacking and feminism help us to create the commons architecture?

  • What are the alternative strategies and tactics to enable collective visioning and co-creation of the archi-tecture of the urban commons?