English versions of the following articles are available online

Title: A new use of architecture. The political potential of Agamben’s common use
Author: Camila Boano. Director, MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College of London, London, UK. / Giovanna Astolfo. Teaching Fellow, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College of London, Londres, UK.
Abstract: In architecture, what does use mean? This article explores the theory of use in Giorgio Agamben’s works, confronting a series of oppositions between use,
property, appropriation, use value and right to use, to finally reach a beyond-the-use condition of the common, where common is not just free to use, but rather free from use: a condition of pure availability.
Keywords: property, appropriation, use value, profanation, deactivation
[read more…]

Title: Politics of the playground: the spaces of play of Robert Moses and Aldo van Eyck
Author: Nicolás Stutzin. Associate Professor of the School of Architecture at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: As a machine for the production of common experiences, the playground was one of the most promoted urban spaces in the mid-twentieth century. Through the surprising parallel between Aldo van Eyck’s plan in Amsterdam and Robert Moses’s plan for New York, this article proves that such a politically correct program can be grounded on completely opposing world views; that is,
that a common space can also be a place to experiment divergent political visions.
Keywords: New York, Amsterdam, ideology, public space, city
[read more…]

Title: About the commons and the public
Author: Alberto Sato. Professor. Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: For many architects, the very idea of public space raises lots of fantasies about an urban life in common. However, in practice, these spaces are not used collectively and, when such thing happens, use exceeds the possibility that architectural design can control it. By discussing the notions of commons and public space, this text shows us the difficulty of understanding these two concepts as synonyms.
Keywords: public space, multitude, individual, commodity, communication
[read more…]

Title: Towards the Production of Design Commons: A Matter of Scale and Reconfiguration
Author: Elena Antonopoulou. School of Architecture. National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Grecce. / Christos Chondros. School of Architecture. National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Grecce. / Maria Koutsari. School of Architecture. National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Grecce.
Abstract: Although new methods of collaborative production might seem to anticipate a communal era in architecture, Harvey argues that commonality strategies that work in small organizations cannot be reproduced in other scales. With this warning as starting point, this article asks for the alternatives of commonality in architecture in its various levels, ranging from object design to urban planning.
Keywords: architecture, commoning, new economy, collective, immaterial
production
[read more…]

Title: The city as accumulation: Searching for the common images of Santiago
Author: José Ignacio Vielma. Professor, Department of Architecture, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: Based on a thorough review of several photographers who have dedicated to portray everyday urban landscapes, this article offers a selection of images of a common and ordinary Santiago. Away from the pretension of becoming tourist postcards, these photographs show a city built through accumulation; that is, although they are common images they are paradoxically made up by the sum of self-references.
Keywords: photography, ordinary, everyday, as found, cityscape
[read more…]

Title: The Official Urbanization Plan for the City of Santiago from 1939: common traces between the modern city and the preceding city
Author: José Rosas. Professor, School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. / Wren Strabicchi. Professor, School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. / Germán Hidalgo. Professor, School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. / Pedro Bannen. Director, Instituto de Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: By drawing the limits between public and private, the architectural definition of the city through a plan generates precise ways of common life (unlike a master plan which only defines general conditions). Through an in-depth reading of Brunner’s Official Plan of 1939, this article analyses a proposal that, through lines that defined blocks’ and streets’ form –the common space–, managed to establish a new idea of urbanity for Santiago.
Keywords: Brunner, urbanism, drawing, street, block
[read more…]

Title: Santiago, a common location: the city in po st-dictatorship chilean cinema
Author: Marcelo Vizcaíno. Professor. Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. / Claudio Garrido. Professor. Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: When portraying the contemporary city, film has the capacity of proposing images that, due to the massiveness of the format, become common. Based on the idea that film generates discourse, this article analyses Chilean film production in a postdictatorship period to seek for those images of the city that, by repeatedly appearing on the big screen, end up generating Santiago’s common imaginary.
Keywords: imaginary, identity, landscape, fiction, urban scenography
[read more…]

Title: Architecture after crisis. A journey through contemporary commoning practices
Author: Pelin Tan. Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Artuklu University, Mardin, Turkey.
Abstract: After the economic crisis of 2008 many architects have devoted to the search of an alternative and communal production model capable of exploring diverse parallel platforms without having to cave in to the pressures of a capitalist economy. This text presents a journey through several contemporary examples, analyzing the possibilities that arise when commonality replaces professionalization in architecture.
Keywords: commons, alternative, labor, conflict, agonism
[read more…]

Editorial. Defining a common space

TThe question is clear: is the common so common? While the surprising consensus in ARQ’s editorial committee in the definition of this issue’s theme could make us believe so, the intense subsequent debate within the same committee with regard to the emphasis of this number indicates the contrary. The understanding of the common does not seem to be so common.

The arguments were several. On the one hand, the common was understood as the ordinary, that is, as that which has no aspiration to be transformed into something exceptional. On the other, reading this issue in terms of property, the common appeared in relation to the public (if something is common it belongs to everyone, therefore it’s public). Finally, given the recent revaluation of concepts such as ‘the commons’ (Hardt and Negri) or ‘common use’ (Agamben), the common was perceived as a political device able to defy the public-private dichotomy and to open up to the possibility for architectures which overcome it.

Being coherent with the theme’s plurality, every perspective is present in this issue of arq. Both Fell’s photographic portfolio and Stutzin’s article demonstrate that even that which appears as most common has an implicit political view. The possibilities of a politicized architecture which emerges from the common are explored in articles by Tan, Boano and Astolfo, Sato,and also by Antonoupolou, Chondros and Koutsari. At the same time, the examples of Atelier Bow-Wow, Rozana Montiel and A(n) Office propose that the architectural project in itself can be an effective tool in generating commonality. Meanwhile, Plan Comun, Correa and team, and 3arquitectos propose architectures that multiply the possibilities of interaction within public space. Finally Corvalan –in the only non-urban example in this issue– proposes an aesthetic of ‘the ordinary’ produced through the direct communication between architect and builder, dismissing the mediation of disciplinary techniques of representation. Back in the city, and in a dossier-like format, we present three texts dedicated to a very common place. Vizcaino and Garrido present us with the common imaginaries of Santiago as portrayed
by recent Chilean film production. Rosas, Hidalgo, Strabucchi and Bannen invite us to observe Brunner’s plan to discover how he weaved common spaces within the tissue of the existing city and the modern one. And Vielma presents us the disturbing common images that constitute the visual landscape of Chile’s capital city. Thus, in this edition we explore the plurality of meanings of the common, exposing the controversies so that our acute readers can appreciate the diversity of arguments.

Though perhaps, when addressing the common, these disputes aren’t such.

In his text “Public and Common(s)”, the architect and historian Reinhold Martin analyzes –from architecture– the different meanings of the common and its apparent confusion with the public.¹ Hannah Arendt for example, sees the common as synonymous of the public because she understands it in opposition to the individual (which appears in the private space)²; therefore, if the common is that which appears in the polis –the public sphere where citizens participate– the concept is more related to politics than to property. At the same time, Hardt and Negri propose that “the metropolis (…) is the space of the common, of people living together sharing resources, communicating, exchanging goods and ideas.”³ As Martin acutely observes, in both visions the city is the environment that allows the common to appear. To this it might be added –as the Smithsons, Venturi and Scott-Brown, or Atelier Bow-Wow have proven–, that the common as the ordinary arises from reassessing the existing city.⁴

In other words, whichever emphasis is made –quotidian, public or political–, it is in the city where the common appears and is produced. Because beyond the fantasy of a life in community as an idyllic or utopian aspiration, the truth is that –precisely due to its inherent pluralism– the common, such as the city, is not foreign to conflict and debate (otherwise it would be another form of totalitarianism). The common, then, isn’t that which we all agree upon, but rather the space in which we can safely disagree. Thus, the editorial committee’s consensus only reaffirms the renewed preoccupation towards the city in contemporary architecture, while the subsequent debate is nothing else than a natural consequence of the agonistic condition of life in common.

Understanding that architecture operates not only in the multiplicity of scales –from the detail to urban planning– but also in multiple formats – from design to the public debate of ideas– in arq magazine we are opening a space for these discussions because we believe that the architect has an unavoidable ethical responsibility towards the city, the place where society gathers because they have something in common. And while the city allows the private to gain profit, it is also the place where the density of individualities makes necessary the existence of spaces for debate and negotiation, in other words, those spaces where what we have in common is at stake. For if the private is that which society is deprived of, then the common is that which is shared.

Today, and challenging the stubborn idealizations we might have about urban life, it seems that fear, comfort and laziness increasingly reduce the existence of those spaces where the common appears and is produced. So what do we do while we discover how to recover the commonality of the city? What might these common spaces be, where different views have a place for discussion, negotiation and coming together? Ideally they should be many. By the way, and based on the prestige built up over 35 years, we hope that in this new stage arq magazine can be one of those spaces.

Summary (printed version)

Photographic Report

The mid-space / Stephanie Fell

Editorial

Defining a common space / Francisco Díaz

Readings, works and projects

A new use of architecture. The political potential of Agamben’s common use / Camillo Boano, Giovanna Astolfo

House Opera | Opera House / Mitch McEwen, Marcelo López-Dinardi

Politics of the playground:the spaces of play of Robert Moses and Aldo van Eyck / Nicolás Stutzin

Aldo van Eyck’s playgrounds / Fernando Pérez Oyarzún

Common-Unity / Rozana Montiel, Alin Wallach

About the commons and the public / Aberto Sato

Towards the Production of Design Commons:
A Matter of Scale and Reconfiguration / Elena Antonopoulou, Christos Chondros, Maria Koutsari

Kitamoto Station Plaza / Atelier Bow-Wow

Museums of Architecture and Photograph / Plan Común

The city as accumulation: Searching for the common images of Santiago / José Ignacio Vielma

The Official Urbanization Plan for the City of Santiago from 1939: common traces between the modern city and the preceding city / José Rosas, Wren Strabucchi, Germán Hidalgo, Pedro Bannen

Santiago, a common location: the city in post-dictatorship chilean cinema / Marcelo Vizcaíno, Claudio Garrido

Community Center / 3arquitectos

Cabaña Lanalhue (Less than zero) / Juan Pablo Corvalán

Architecture after crisis. A journey through contemporary commoning practices / Pelin Tan

¿Versus Venecia? Primera Bienal de Arquitectura de Chicago, 2015 / Sebastián Paredes