Livia Eggler (FS19)

Cities have become important sources for extracting profit. Against this backdrop the urban commons emerged as a new way to re-appropriate the city. What is the role of the architect and architecture in the context of the urban commons?

The first step towards this theme was an extensive theoretical study. It comprised finding for myself a definition of what the urban commons exactly are. I narrowed the definition down to three aspects: Commoning, Norm & Form, and Common Resource. Based on this understanding I searched for examples in the built environment expressing these concepts. This brought me to collective spaces, such as the Tukano Maloca in the Columbian Amazon, the Kamikazze Loggia in Georgia, the Mudhif in the Iraq, the Dewanyia in Kuwait, and finally the Allmendräume in the new collective housings, the “Parkplatz”, and the Labyrinth in Zurich.

Understanding more and more the need, but seeing also the lack of collective spaces in the city life, the proposal emerged to develop a typology of urban (indoor) collective spaces. The following questions were asked in this regard: Where will they be located? How should they look like? And what program can they host? I chose Zurich as a case study. Analyzing it I recognized that within the city block and open building structure lay hidden opportunities that could be unlocked for the urban commons. Coming back to my three notions of the definition of the urban commons, I identified the collective spaces which produce social capital with Commoning, my design approach to develop a new typology based on principles of architectural elements such as form, materiality, composition and function with Norm & Form, and the city block and open building structure with the Common Resource.