A call for a revised form of spatial politics. This anthology presents work on cultures of assembly. It stresses the relevance of small-scale and decentralized spatial formats of local knowledge production to community building and embedded political decision-making in the context of the socio-ecological transition. It reinforces the role of both individual and collective action while proposing distributed assembly and proximity as core attributes in the production of the contemporary and future city. It calls for a revised form of spatial politics.
Miessen's ongoing research trajectory Cultures of Assembly was initially kicked off during a Harvard GSD fellowship in collaboration with Joseph Grima, in which the two architects investigated the sociopolitical dimension of (urban) spatial design. Observing the Kuwaiti cultural and social landscape with a specific interest in the politico-spatial phenomenon of Diwaniya, this distributed urban form of para-institutional assembly established a starting point for a long-term body of research.
Diwaniya can be understood and interpreted in multiple ways. Beyond a techno-futuristic idea of progress, it presents a showcase of an alternative that attempts to imagine a model of a (more) solidary city. On the scale of a city, and in fact small country, it interrogates how we--as a society--can learn from and produce alternative formats of physical exchange, working towards realistic scenarios of decentralized decision-making and spatial justice.
Agonistic Assemblies asks: how can spaces--both physical and virtual--be envisaged to create publics? How is collectivity and society being generated spatially and in terms of policy? How do we "practice" society as a bodily, spatial form, and how does this practice contribute to spatial justice? Are there specific spatial settings that can intensify these practices? What kind of spatial design can we imagine as platforms for change?
Central to this project is the reflecting on and rendering of the underlying driving forces of informal institution building at the interface of agonistic (urban) spatial politics--in a global political climate facing what Mark Fisher famously framed as "capitalist realism" in conjunction with the social-ecological transition while, arguably, also facing a crisis of imagination.
This project articulates a curatorial impetus towards urban policy making in conjunction with spatial proximity as a tool to mediate between the individual, the collective, the neighborhood, the city, state politics, and society at large. If we understand assembly as a form of spatial gathering, and the bonfire as the prehistoric space of assembly, what constitutes its contemporary equivalent?
ContributorsZahra Ali Baba, Ole Bouman, Francelle Cane, Giancarlo De Carlo, Claudia Chwalisz, Kenny Cupers, Anne Davidian, Diane E. Davis, Erhard Eppler, Jesko Fezer, Joseph Grima, Amelie Klein, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Florian Malzacher, Markus Miessen, Chantal Mouffe, Gustav Kj r Vad Nielsen, César Reyes Nájera, Dennis Pohl, Patricia Reed, Vera Sacchetti, Nikolaj Schultz, Rahel Süss, Pelin Tan, Roemer Van Toorn, David Mulder Van Der Vegt, Sarah M. Whiting, Mirjam Zadoff
呼籲修訂空間政治的呼聲。
這本選集呈現了有關集會文化的作品。它強調小規模和分散式的地方知識生產空間形式對社區建設和嵌入式政治決策在社會生態轉型背景下的相關性。它強調個人和集體行動的角色，同時提出分散集會和接近性作為當代和未來城市生產的核心特徵。它呼籲修訂空間政治的形式。
Miessen的持續研究軌跡「集會文化」最初是在哈佛大學設計學院的研究員職位上與Joseph Grima合作展開的，兩位建築師在其中探討了（城市）空間設計的社會政治維度。在對科威特的文化和社會景觀進行觀察時，他們特別關注了Diwaniya這種政治-空間現象，這種分散的城市集會形式為長期研究奠定了基礎。
Diwaniya可以以多種方式理解和解釋。除了技術-未來主義進步的想法外，它還展示了一種嘗試想像（更）團結城市模型的替代方案。在城市和實際上是小國的尺度上，它探討了我們作為一個社會如何從中學習並產生分散決策和空間正義的替代物理交流形式的問題。
《對抗性集會》提出了以下問題：如何設想能夠創造公眾的空間（無論是物理還是虛擬）？在空間和政策方面，集體和社會是如何被空間生成的？我們如何「實踐」社會作為一種身體、空間形式，這種實踐如何促進空間正義？是否有特定的空間設置可以加強這些實踐？我們可以想像什麼樣的空間設計作為改變的平台？
這個項目的核心是反思和呈現在拚鬥性（城市）空間政治交界處的非正式機構建設的潛在驅動力，這在全球政治氛圍中面臨著馬克·費舍爾所著名描述的「資本主義寫實主義」以及社會生態轉型的同時，也面臨著想像力的危機。
這個項目表達了一種策展的衝動，旨在與空間接近性相結合，作為調解個人、集體、鄰里、城市、國家政治和整個社會之間的工具，以推動城市政策制定。如果我們將集會理解為一種空間聚集的形式，而篝火則是史前集會空間，那麼什麼構成了它的當代等效物？
貢獻者：
Zahra Ali Baba、Ole Bouman、Francelle Cane、Giancarlo De Carlo、Claudia Chwalisz、Kenny Cupers、Anne Davidian、Diane E. Davis、Erhard Eppler、Jesko Fezer、Joseph Grima、Amelie Klein、Charlotte Malterre-Barthes、Florian Malzacher、Markus Miessen、Chantal Mouffe、Gustav Kj r Vad Nielsen、César Reyes Nájera、Dennis Pohl、Patricia Reed、Vera Sacchetti、Nikolaj Schultz、Rahel Süss、Pelin Tan、Roemer Van Toorn、David Mulder Van Der Vegt、Sarah M. Whiting、Mirjam Zadoff
Markus Miessen is an architect, writer, director of Studio Miessen, and Professor of Urban Transformation at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the chair of the City of Esch, associated with the master programme "Architecture, European Urbanisation, Globalisation."
