Last month I took part in an incredible summerschool on urban commoning! Organised by Permanent Brussels, “Building Beyond” prosed ‘collective strategies for just cities’ through (or beyond!) the lenses of property, type and participation.
Levente Polyak presented countless examples that fall in-between or beyond public and private ownership paradigms. Nishat Awan delivered a haunting, moving keynote on architectures of displacement and forms of non-belonging. Khensani de Klerk proposed a more fluid spatial lexicon for ‘beyonding’ architectural typologies. Darinka Czischke surveyed a wide range of collaborative housing models.
Following a delicious vegan lunch at Recycl’Art, the afternoons were dedicated to workshops that were hard to choose from. Much gratitude to Els Silvrants-Barclay, Menna Agha and Bas van Heur for organising this amazing gathering and bringing together such inspiring participants. See you all at the inaugural festival of dNM in 2023!
de Nieuwe Meent was featured on two roundtables, with Andrea Verdecchia presenting the legal, financial and architectural sides, and I discussed the challenges we encounter with our autonomy, solidarity, inclusion and diversity aspirations. It was an honour to share the stage with Paul Citron of Les Grands Voisins, Natassa Dourida of Communitism!
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