Disrupting the Commons. Social Change and the Emergence of New Subjects in Modern Housing

Abstract

Most dominant narratives in architectural theory, even from opposite positions, share their skepticism against the discipline’s possibilities of being an emancipatory force in society. Either for understanding that it is too difficult for architecture to induce significant change or because they deem it unnecessary. This paper attempts to introduce a new perspective in that debate. Following Jacques Rancière’s writings on the politics of esthetics, instead of looking for systemic transformations, it will aim to uncover discrete emancipatory episodes in the realm of architecture. These episodes happen as ambiguous moments of disruption of the architectural commons. New voices previously dismissed or ignored by architecture’s dominant discourse emerge into visibility, altering what Rancière calls the distribution of the sensible. In that way, the realm of our common shared experiences—of what can be expressed and who can express it—expands to new subjects and architectures. To exemplify these emancipatory disruptions, this paper will analyze three heterodox examples from the twentieth-century modern housing canon: Red Vienna’s Gemeindebauten, Rome’s Quartiere Tiburtino, and Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall in Newcastle. These cases can establish a baseline and an ancestry of emancipatory practices whose lessons might be helpful in our current context.