ARC3102H S
Instructor: Roberto Damiani
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 9:00am - 12:00pm

The seminar will present and discuss some critical theories and design precedents from the cultural and architectural discourse on public and communitarian space in urban environments since the formation of the nation-states.

While public space played a fundamental role in the social revolution of the modern urban society, the crisis of the welfare state and rise of neoliberal ideas questioned its instrumentality and symbolic value as a broader and cohesive narrative. On the other side, the exclusivity of some experimental forms of communitarian living in opposition to the openness of public ones met the skepticism of many thinkers and designers that dismissed the commons as a potential reference for more substantial forms of space design and organization.

In more recent years, as a response to the environmental crisis and the failure of the public as a model of governance, thinkers like Elinor Ostrom, David Harvey, and Stavros Stavrides saw in the commons a model for political participation that functions in-between the state's abstract policies and private enterprise's pursuit of self-interest.

Under these premises, students will be introduced to canonical forms of public and communitarian ways of inhabitation and to a selection of design theories and precedents that questioned them through a trans-disciplinary analysis that will link architectural to political, sociological, and economic thinking.

The seminar will discuss the public and the common through three individual yet connected physical/digital space concepts: grounds/platforms, monuments/interfaces, and neighbourhoods/global villages. A discussion on theories on the public and the common in connection to the global urban and architectural discourse will open each section. The second part will present how the discussed theories informed a selection of design ideas and practices. The last section will focus on the impact of neoliberalism and digital technologies on the spatial condition.

Students are expected to deliver weekly presentations on the class readings and work on a research paper to be submitted at the end of the term. The seminar will host guest lectures by architects and scholars whose work investigates forms of living together.