architecture | competitions || Prix de Rome

Common Wealth of Co-existence August Allebéplein, Stadsdeel Slotervaart, Amsterdam

I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.Aime Cecaire

With the blinders of today’s dominant ideologies it is difficult to see the common, even though it is all around us. Neoliberal government policies have sought in recent decades to privatize the common, making cultural products – such as housing, public space, information, ideas, and even species of animals and plants– into private property. Out of the privatization of the common emerged a splintering, at times even chaotic, landscape of deterioration like the one we find on the August Allebéplein in Amsterdam today. Exclusive alternatives dealing with private or public space will not solve the problem. Public space these days has become commercial; a scripted space of shopping and leisure...read more