Marcelo López-Dinardi

The book provides an urgent framework and collective reflection on understanding how to reconsider and recast architecture within ideas and politics of the commons and practices of commoning. Architecture from Public to Commons opens a dialogue with the scales of the commons, the limits of language for fluid identities, the practices of architecture as an institution, the design of objects for shared value, land protocols that explore alternatives to profit-seeking, and spirited conversations about revolting against architectural labor. Specific chapters also explore the boundaries of Blackness across the Atlantic, water cycles in depleted territories, indigenous women-led territorial and human rights cases, climate change accidental commons, and the active search for racial justice with design and place. Contributions range from theoretical and historical essays to current case studies of on-the-ground practices in the US, the Middle East, Europe, and Central and South America.

The book counts with contributions by Pelin Tan, Amira Hanafi, Marina Otero Verzier, Fernando Portal, Nandini Bagchee, coopia, Emanuel Admassu, Luciana Varkulja, Linda Schilling Cuellar, Elis Mendoza, Janette Kim, and Bryan Lee Jr.

What commons, for what socialnesses? This is the question this book
addresses. This convenes a specific mode of inquiry that characterizes a new network of researchers and thinkers gathered in this volume, who are gaining a growing voice in the field of critical architectural practices.

Words from the Preface by Andrés Jaque, Dean and Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University.

Available online here: https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-from-Public-to-Commons/Lopez-Dinardi/p/book/9781032394459# Discount Code: ESA33

I served as Guest Editor for the academic journal ARQ 111 on the theme of DEGROWTH. The editorial asks, ‘is degrowth appropriate for all geographies and cultures? Is it worth exploring if it is not an anti-capitalist pursuit? Who is responsible, and who pays the price of degrowth? And for us, what is the role of architecture in this complex web of relational logistics?’ The discussion of degrowth proposed is broadly organized by situating geographies and timelines. Contributors share their experience, knowledge, and projects from Ukraine to South Africa, Europe, the Arab Gulf, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

MAKING THE PUBLIC–COMMONS is an installation and a conversations-marathon project motivated by the ambition and need to elaborate our positions towards the making and building public–commons, primarily through an act of appearance and conversation much required in our cultural context. The project relies mainly on direct dialogue and embodied engagement, two crucial forms of impact in our contemporary culture beyond quantitative metrics. It proposes and promotes dialogue and conversations around topics of—but not limited to, how and what constitutes the public and the commons, and why it is critical to appear in public today as we continue to battle the isolating impact of the global pandemic. Conversations include institutions, commoning, landscapes, justice, measures, cooperation, water, ecologies, language, and appearance. MAKING THE PUBLIC–COMMONS is conceived, curated, and organized by Marcelo López-Dinardi.

www.mtp-c.info

As a newcomer faculty to Texas in the Fall of 2018, I decided to dedicate most of my architecture studios—junior, senior, and graduate, to learn about the cities of Bryan and College Station (BCS), their logic, motivations, and potential pitfalls. These studios were a new endeavor to many. The thinking of architecture as a cultural product in dialogue with territorial complexities has been the driving force to these research-based studios. We carefully considered, investigated, pondered, and visualized the multiplicity of factors that we understood are shaping the cities. We did this primarily through mapping. There are tens of information and analysis maps made through publicly available data. In addition, we proposed a series of urban scale projects in dialogue with those findings. An Agenda for BCS is a digital book that documents that effort to expand the scope and possibilities for how we imagine this territory.

Digital Book with tens of maps and 20 projects shaping the agenda can be found at BCSAGENDA