6:30pm (GMT)
October 28–December 10, 2020
Common Field is a lecture series organised by Garagem Sul and Lisbon Architecture Triennale that brings several European practitioners, academics and editors to Lisbon. The series is curated by the architects Felipe De Ferrari, based in Paris where he runs the studio Plan Común and the platform OnArchitecture, and Diana Menino, based in Lisbon where she runs Campo Arquitectura.
On October 28, the first live streaming event of the series sets sights the transformation and reuse of pre-existent buildings and infrastructure. Our guests are Dr. Jane Hall, founding member of the London architecture collective Assemble, and Swiss architect Barbara Buser, co-founder of both architectural practice baubüro in situ and denkstat, a think-tank specialized in project development. Both guests will introduce their practices’ strategic and collaborative approaches in transforming pre-existing structures, while also examining the role of architects as mediators within complex processes of transformation—including the interplay of profitability and financing, planning and construction, communication and participation.
In December, the second lecture is focused on collective housing, living together, and the potential of an architecture without status. It will include presentations by and Martino Tattara, co-founder of Brussels-based practice Dogma, and Roger Tudó, founding member of Catalan studio Harquitectes. Both guests will introduce how their practices are reflecting and challenging cultural and material standards—offering alternative and straightforward models that can be enjoyed by the many—through a series of recent projects belonging to different programmes, and bearing diverse complexities and scales: from social housing blocks in Mexico to the renovation of pre-existing buildings in Barcelona.
These two events can be perceived together as layered bricks shaping a concrete understanding of architecture as a common field of knowledge.
Assemble + baüburo in situ
Wednesday, October 28, 6:30pm (Lisbon time)
On Cooperation, Reuse and Upcycling
Dogma + Harquitectes
Thursday, December 10, 6:30pm (Lisbon time)
On New Housing Models and Architecture without Status
The lectures will be live-streamed. Click on the links above for more details.
About Common Field
Architecture should be understood as a strategic attitude to space and resources. Common Field aims to discuss architecture in its most literal sense: a collective and strategic body of knowledge that is and can be applied by everyone, in any community, environment or culture, through a series of mechanisms, devices, structures and forms. The development of a Common Field requires an assessment of the notion of common sense, a critical concept in the present context of global neo-liberalisation and political decay. In adopting a critical and optimistic attitude towards physical and cultural contexts, policies, briefs and clients, architecture can appropriate reality in radical and unexpected ways from research to construction—making visible their potential and contradictions, developing projects that enable emancipatory ideas, and thus building a Common Field. We argue that a radical architectural approach is not only desirable but necessary. Such an approach can be conceived as an accumulative process of constant appropriation, imitation, repetition, translation, and re-contextualisation with open-minded and generous thinking—with both pragmatism and humour—and based on the careful review of material reality and social conditions. Common Field will explore the threads that lead us towards this collective form of construction.
