07_Life in Common:
Re-enchanting the City through Urban Commoning
2022-2023
3rd Year Individual Design Project (Central Saint Martins)
Instructors: Louis Lupien and Annelie Kops
Awards: RIBA Bronze Commendation Award
Central Saint Martins Spatial Practices 1st Prize
Location: Woolwich, London
Project Type: Community / Self-Build
Typology: Mixed-Use
What would Woolwich look like if we were to feed the seeds that could initiate the growth and spread of mutual aid, solidarity and sharing across the city?
Imagining how a currently derelict site in Woolwich has the potential to be a key transitory space and active frontier to re-enchant the city through urban commoning. Visualising how a reclaimed and re-appropriated space could grow out of the existing networks, needs and interests of the local actors.
01_Proposed Axonometric: After 50+ Years Common Ground
The project unfolds in Woolwich, where once was flourishing with “self-thumping vitality” being at the forefront of the cooperative movements is now felt by its inhabitants as being merely a passive site of capital extraction– with local agents being threatened out of their spaces due to top-down gentrification schemes.
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Uncommon Ground
(With Existing Networks of Solidarity)
The history of commoning was written in the fabric of Woolwich as it was common land where once the Woolwich Commons had the right to graze their livestockuntil the 18th century enclosures—turning the common land into sites of capital accumlation.
Following the dispossession of the commons, the distinct character and energy of Woolwich have changed drastically. Today, Woolwich is facing a similar kind of enclosure, with top-down gentrification schemes imposed, local agents who have formed deep roots and networks in Woolwich are now being threatened out of their spaces.
The site, Murray's Yard sits between the heart of Woolwich Common with its cooperative roots and key producers of solidarity are located and the Royal Arsenal, the manifestation of Woolwich’s regeneration scheme. It is a site with the potential to be a key transitory space and active frontier if it was to be re-claimed, re-imagined and re-appropriated by the local actors.
02_Who is the City for if not for it’s People? Community Responses to Gentrification
However, communities are never born out of top-down practices, they are formed through grassroots initiatives created by everyday city dwellers through intimate and dispersed roots of trust, mutual aid and solidarity that have been planted, taken care of to flourish. It is also through these networks of solidarity where the thresholds of the city have been transgressed—from barriers of difference into the common.
03_Everyday Soidarity: a Story about the everyday mundane sites of solidarity in Woolwich and the people who actively produce/ disrupts these atmospheres
The alternative world surrounds all of us, it is tangible and constantly being re-shaped by our collective struggle. From collective emancipation to appropriation of derelict spaces in the city. These are all ever-expanding narratives of “urban commoning” offering us hopeful glimpses of how our cities could be radically remade if we are to foster conditions of our cities for bottom-up participatory city-making to flourish.
04_Key Agents, Sites and Networks of Solidarity and Mutual Aid in Woolwich
05_How can this project build upon the existing works of practitioners who paved the way for participatory practice?
06_Design Strategy: The Support and Infill Approach and Bottom up decision making
Projecting this future on the site, Murray's Yard— re-imagining how an abandoned, forgotten corner of the city in which through 5 distinct phases, projected across 50+ years, could have the potential to blossom as a key transitory space and active frontier if it was to be incrementally re-claimed and re-appropriated by local actors. Building upon the existing conditions of the Woolwich with real characters, experiences and networks, my project becomes the medium to re-construct the narratives, characters and changes that are necessary to make the potential future a reality.
07_Projected timeline across 50+ years, 5 key phases and incremental building evolution
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Collective Appropriation
of the Derelict Site
A group of artists who are being slowly evicted from SET Woolwich saw the opportunity on the derelict site and decided self-organise to transform the existing buildings on the site into workshop and studio spaces.
Activists from Speak Out Woolwich help out in the process through street demonstrations in hopes for rights to claim the site for the commons for the long term.
08_Building activity in phase 1 by artists, children and activists as they begin to reclaim and self-build on the derelict site
09_Exploded axonometric of the artist studios, built out of reclaimed materials from the site
10_A glimpse through the artist studios
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Commoning
Overtime, the Woolwich commons have expanded to include as many active agents in decision making as possible. As a result, the commoning core has been built to facilitate collective, non-hierarchical decision making over what is built.
An architect was appointed by the council to work alongside the commons to facilitate some of their works. In assisting the Commons with expanding commoning, the entrance to the site connecting Powis street is revitalised.
Moreover, out of need and now with permit, the Woolwich Commons continued to appropriate the building, creating modules for housing and living.
11_Phase 2 incremental building activity on the site and people involved
12_Visualisation of the street and commons assembly
13_Potential conditions of a currently derelict building if it were to be reclaimed by the urban commons for housing
14_A glimpse through the co-living building and construction details of the infill modules
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The Spatial Language of Urban Commoning
After the council approved the use for the other side of the site, the architect and the urban commons worked together to design and create structures that reflected the processes of urban commoning and to ultimately ensure its sustainability.
As a result, the mother tree, inspired by the mother tree in the forest ecosystem, is designed as a hydroponic system where rainwater and solar is collected and distributed to the support structures using an underground circular water network system.
Moreover, a catalogue of support structures was developed with a construction language to embrace the sharing of materials, knowledge and encouraging mutual aid in building. Developed as a kit of parts to be collectively self-built, embracing negotiation and appropriation and designed for disassembly to reflect the ever-changing and expanding nature of urban commoning。
15_Common Resources: Developing sustainable methods of water management, renewable energy and creating new habitats
16_Visualisation of the support structures and the mother tree water collection structure
17_Mutual Aid in Self Building: a construction sequence in building and appropriating the support structures
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Common Ground
The common ground is actively taken care of by the Woolwich Commons extending care beyond humans into the non-human in creating resilient habitats for animals and living in harmony with nature. Everyone has a key role in sharing resources, knowledge and in collectively nurturing the site—empowered to make changes to benefit the needs of the community.
However, life in common does not mean living free of friction, however it is through the willingness to navigate through those differences for the collective pursuit for a more humane, egalitarian city.
The site has become a key transitory space for the city demonstrating an alternative form of spatial production born out of collective decision making, and self-determination.Where previously the city was “partitioned” thresholds are now crossed with the streets being active frontiers of growing and nurturing common spaces.
18_Life in Common: a view of the site after 30+ Years
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Re-enchanting the City through Urban Commoning
The common ground is actively taken care of by the Woolwich Commons extending care beyond humans into the non-human in creating resilient habitats for animals and living in harmony with nature. Everyone has a key role in sharing resources, knowledge and in collectively nurturing the site—empowered to make changes to benefit the needs of the community.
However, life in common does not mean living free of friction, however it is through the willingness to navigate through those differences for the collective pursuit for a more humane, egalitarian city.
The site has become a key transitory space for the city demonstrating an alternative form of spatial production born out of collective decision making, and self-determination.Where previously the city was “partitioned” thresholds are now crossed with the streets being active frontiers of growing and nurturing common spaces.
19_A slice through the Life in Common: Section through the Artist Studios and the Workshop
20_A slice through the Life in Common: Section through the street, transformed into key threshold spaces
The Matrix
A matrix (5x5) was used as a form of communicating my project. Where viewers (spatial practitioners, the Woolwich Council) were invited to walk around the set up with the horizontal axis progressing through the phases and years and the vertical axis showing the input from the various actors.
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How can practices of urban commoning create resilient neighbourhoods against the climate emergency?
Climate change is the crisis of our time, and if we don’t drastically change the ways in which we live now, there will be no future in 50 years, which is why this project was formed on the basis of projecting an alternative future of how we can live together for both Woolwich and cities around the world.
Communities around the world will play a pivotal role in adapting to climate change, especially in the context where current global efforts have been proving insufficient and top-down decision making continue to be rooted in capitalist accumulation but not our collective livelihood. Learning from Woolwich and how the local actors are intricately connected to each other creating their own self-help networks—an alliance of businesses, neighbours and voluntary groups— to ensure collective resilience against their current gentrification and living crisis. Social solidarity networks are incredibly powerful as collective action, mutual aid is critical to build climate resilience.
The practices of urban commoning are offered as a lens in which we can not only imagine but actively engage with to not be passive subjects waiting for change to be implemented but mobilized and take active agency in producing alternative creative and sustainable ways to mitigate impacts of climate change. This has been seen all around the world with numerous cases of urban commons om tackling questions relating to creating alternative urban sustainable economies such as through sustainable management of resources such as food, energy, water production and distribution, revitalizing loss biodiversity and habitats, mitigating carbon-footprints of cities and much more—an expanding narrative of the potentials of urban commoning to create resilient neighborhoods.
The project highlights a critical factor in which it is only through the facilitating, non-hierarchal and collaborative relationship formed between the urban commons, council and architect—being in the same transitory space and with a common agenda—we can imagine the possibilities of making wider change possible.
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How does the role of the architect change?
Realising that many urban commoning projects are incredibly short-lived, risks enclosure or cannot develop beyond a local or temporary scale.
Hence, spatial practitioners need to assert a critical role as public agents representing the key role of intermediaries or mediators between the urban commons and administration—and in developing a “double agency” both facilitating and negotiating bottom-up processes of city making. (Brito, 2020)
Presentation