Architectural agency and the commons

Abstract

Discourse on and around the commons has in recent decades gained renewed attention thanks largely to Elinor Ostrom’s foundational work on ‘common pool resource management’ (1990), ending a period in which the commons had, in the wake of Garrett Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968), been all but forgotten. Although, more recently, accounts of commons as historically and spatially situated creative practices have emerged as forms of architectural agency, they are as yet undeveloped. This special issue seeks to shift the centre of commons discourse to these neglected positions of time, place, and acts of architectural making. Notions of commons and enclosure have undergone a near reversal in meaning in commons discourse. In feudal Europe, the commons were part of a political system which tied landholders and their tenants together; commoners worked the land and had rights over it despite the ownership of that land by others. This only became nationally contentious— sometimes violently so — with the advent, and centuries-drawn-out progression, of enclosure; the commons in this understanding were never ‘free’ nor ‘free-for-all’. Although the commons have since then been places of contestation, we would argue for an account of the commons as spaces and practices of hope — not as lost utopias to be regained, but instead as places and practices of relational and architectural co-production. For some, this co-production overtly seeks to topple or invert structurally unequal top-down hierarchies, whereas others would seek an accommodation with them. All, though, demand or imply a new commoning agency. This focus on commons as places where commoners, through creative and spatial practices of co-production, are able to express their agency was pivotal for the ‘City as a Commons’ symposium in Pavia, Italy, in 2019, organised by the special issue co-editor Ioanni Delsante. A number of strands of thought and practice which emerged from the symposium are reflected in the structure of this subsequent special issue. More historically or theoretically inclined papers are followed by a pair of contributions by Stavros Stavrides and by Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou that serve as manifestoes or provocations. The issue culminates with papers that tend to employ tactics of architectural precedent and case study. In that sense, the commons and the common