Sesión 5: Las caminatas

In this chapter I will –feet on Josaphat’s ground, head in its air- focus on the doctoral design practice. I want to take you further along to Josaphat and what is at play on its ground. In the previous chapter 00.03, I have aimed to describe what makes up this ground (00.03.01) and how it became the location of a living lab at large (00.03.02) that blends academic and civic research, beyond its strict perimeter while also valuing Josa-phat as a site of action. Besides, I have described the design-based participatory action research and complementary research methods (00.03.03) that are implemented in this doctoral research and design practice. All together this makes up the framework in which this dissertation and my work as an architect-researcher, commoner, and archi-tect-writer (00.03.04) need to be regarded.

Here in this chapter, I aim to take you along to get to know “three plus one” urban architectural design (uAD) interventions happening on Josaphat’s ground. The tripartite is made up by “Recup’Kitchen” (00.04.02), the “Jardin Latinis” garden (00.04.03) and the “Maison des Possibles” (00.04.04), which is complemented with the rather invisible commoning represented through “Josaph’Aire” (00.04.05).

In the first section (00.04.01), I will claim that these house-garden-and-kitchen initia-tives and their something more (c) that are all together situated in Josaphat’s air (a) can be considered as practices of urban commoning (b). In this setting, these uAD practices make up what I will conceptualize to be “commons architecture”.

In this first section, I situate the doctoral design practice in Josaphat’s air (a). Dis-cussing the concept of the commons and more particularly the urban commons as it underpins the work of the Commons Josaphat collective (b) I will claim that the “three plus one” uAD interventions that I discuss further in this chapter (00.04.02) take part in the broader urban commons movement.

a. Being in Josaphat's air

In the previous chapter 00.03 “Feet on the ground”, I have introduced Josaphat as the ground of the doctoral research and design practice. I evoked its position as temporary used urban land that awaits a future to host an entirely new district (00.03.01). I have described Josaphat as an interesting living lab for civic and academic research that ex-tends beyond its physical barriers. Josaphat is defined to be an urban living lab at large (00.03.02).

Through the design-based participatory action research emerging on/through Josa-phat, designerly ways of knowing and lived experiences come together in situated knowledges. Situated knowledges that build up an analysis and inform the emergent themes discussed in this written account (00.03.03).

Josaphat as the site is today, offers an interesting zone of tension between its planned future directed by the MSI, and its actual commons claim as advocated by the Com-mons Josaphat (CJ) platform. In this in-between, Josaphat finds identity as a site of

108

action. A ground at which several community-oriented initiatives created a place of urban experimentation; Josaphat as a living laboratory, integrated, circular, natural and serene (00.03.02.d).

In this chapter, I will focus on a couple of the self-proclaimed transitional uses that have emerged at Josaphat’s fertile breeding ground. By reconstructing memories (REC) of several of these practices, I aim to bring out the lived experiences and designerly ways of knowing underlying these uAD projects. Inexplicitly these accounts –narrated through my voice as architect-writer- aspire to welcome you –as the reader- in Josaphat’s air. Feet grounded in the concrete experiences of urban commoning, head out in the simmering promises for an altering future for our city.

b. Acting along the commons claim

As the activist agency of Commons Josaphat claimed Josaphat as a commons lab, their pioneering work has put Josaphat on the map. Their merit to launch an open call for ideas (April 2014) and their endeavor to translate these ideas into the solidly written proposal “Josaphat en commun” (Commons Josaphat, 2015b), published in September 2015, has inspired several citizens to get into action themselves. While the collectively written proposal was gaining form, a nomadic urban garden started to install a self-or-ganized use on Josaphat’s southwest corner. Also, the “picnic the commons” events (see 00.03.fig.11) were organized from April to September 2015 to invite and welcome those curious to explore Josaphat actively. From the winter of 2015 onward, bit by bit Josa-phat’s ground came to life. More initiatives would slowly follow and claim their place at Josaphat’s southwest corner.

Today (summer 2018) a multitude of interrelated yet autonomous community-orient-ed initiatives act on Josaphat. Not all of them are directly inspircommunity-orient-ed or influenccommunity-orient-ed by the pioneering work of CJ, but in their shared actions I can read the traces of CJ’s commons claim, if only –but not solely- through my agency that has been strongly inspired by CJ.

I claim the majority of the self-proclaimed transitional activities on Josaphat fit within the commons movement and through this breath Josaphat’s commons air.

The notion of the commons is described by Commons Josaphat (2017) in an accessible way that enthusiasms: “Everywhere in the city people come together to experiment with new ways of community living. Food teams, cohousing projects, self-managed nurseries, community land trusts, community gardens, sustainable neighborhoods, LETS-communi-ties, energy cooperatives, groups of people that consider alternatives and work on various themes such as water management, food production, money, labor, or software.

At first sight, these themes seem rather disconnected from each other, but we feel there is a connection. (…) These initiatives are developing alongside the market. They emphasize use rather than ownership, common ownership and sharing rather than individual property.

They try to handle the limited resources of our planet with care, rather than assuming un-limited growth. They favor more solidarity to further polarization. They sometimes depend on the state, but develop in parallel, because they attach great importance to self-gover-nance. Doing this they do not go against policy, but work together with it and deepen it.

We see the connections. We feel the potential. We see how the contours of a new society are being drawn. For about every area of daily life people, today are working on concrete alternatives. What if we succeeded in bringing all these alternatives together? Wouldn’t

109

that strengthen our community potential to a significant extent? What if we would think together about how the city can be developed based on these principles?”

The text illustrates the merit of CJ not only to recognize the value of existing commons initiatives but also to awaken the potential of connecting and interweaving them. The statement acknowledges the strength of the concrete cases that already exist and the more meta-reflection of what they all together could bring about. The vision of CJ holds the promise of an altered model –a new society-, one that has strong political agency.

Commons Josaphat’s “definition” of the commons is not solely based on their knowl-edge of commons practices, but –less explicitly- is informed by an extensive literature¹ considering the topic. The way CJ presents the commons is based on this shared theo-retical reading in which the commons are in general defined as the combination of three key elements:

(1) a common resource that can be tangible like land, water, and food or immaterial like knowledge and clean air. These non-commodified means are our collective wealth that concern us all –including future generations- and that thus require protection and know-how.

(2) commoners or communities that are involved in the production and reproduction of the common resources. The commons entails self-organized systems and relations that go beyond the conventional recognized public and private actors.

(3) a commoning practice; the institutions, rules that are involved in a new mode of (re)production. This underlying commons process emerges from another logic and generates (relational²) values that are often taken for granted. To prevent these to be jeopardized, the generative nature of commoning is put up front. This commoning is recognized as a core element of the commons as it emphasizes their bio-political (re) production. In the words of Peter Linebaugh, “there is no commons without common-ing” (Bollier, 2014, p. 19).

The commons is about a pooled resource –the what (1)- as well as about the how (3) it is taken care of and by whom (2). Commons scholar David Bollier (2014) demonstrates the integrated relations and interdependence of these three aspects of the commons.

In addition to this threefold definition, the commons also stands for a movement.

Seeing the commons and actions of commoning as a world view; the commons also stand as a political movement, which promises a transition to move away from the mar-ket-state dichotomy.

To better understand this definition and the commons claim on Josaphat, it is essential to comprehend that the commons are not a new concept. They have a strong history tracing back to precapitalist times in England. Traditional commons like woods and fisheries –natural resources- were a common practice before they became enclosed.

English commoners provided, protected and maintained the matters of their life on their own. A village community collectively took up the stewardship of grassland, which provided their sheep with food. Before the industrialization process the right to use the

1 The literature concerning the (urban) commons that I am familiar with and on which I base my arguments are: Asociata Komunitas, Tirca, Axinte and Borcan (2015), Bader and Liesgang (2014), Bauwens and Onzia (2017), Bollier (Bollier, 2014, 2016a), Bollier and Helfrich (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012, 2015b), Borch and Korn-berger (2015), Commons Josaphat (2015b), Cornu, Osri and Rochfeld (2017), De Angelis and Stavrides (2010), De Pauw, Lenna and Nalpas (2013), Dellenbaugh, Kip, Bieniok, Müller and Schwegmann (2015), European Commons Assembly (2016), Ferguson (2014), Helfrich and Haas (2009), IASC (2015), Ostrom (1990), P2P Foundation and Transnational Institute (2017), Pak and Scheerlinck (2015), Pelger, Klever, Klotz and Schulze (2017),Petrescu (2010), Shareable (2017), Van Reusel, De Clerck, Pak and Verbeke (2015), Vicinia (2018a) 2 Relational values here are understood as the concept is described by David Bollier (2016a).

110

grassland –and thus the right to the commons- used to be acknowledged de facto (Bolli-er, 2014; De Angelis, 2010).

In this collective stewardship, it is vital to protect the shared meadows from overgraz-ing -the commons to not be overexploited. The threat of self-interest -even at the cost of the community and the own means of reproduction- is there and has informed the conception of the “Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968). The renowned econom-ic Elinor Ostrom (1990), however, counters the dogma of the tragedy and claims that commoning processes can overcome this challenge. She claims that communities can effectively manage and sustain the commons by setting up constraining rules (Bollier, 2014; De Angelis, 2010).

The discourse of the tragedy of the commons got feet on the ground and provided a foundation to claim in favor of the privatization of these commons. During the indus-trialization period, the grasslands got fenced off, and the village community no longer were able to access their common resource. The collective management of traditional commons converted into a market system privileging private ownership. People became consumers as they lost their communities “with their shared, long-term, nonmarket inter-est” (Bollier, 2014, p. 40). The commons have been commodified, and the humanity that is essential to them had to make place for standard economics. The community got trad-ed off for Economic Man (Bollier, 2016a; Bollier & Helfrich, 2015b; De Angelis, 2010).

Today there are still some traditional commons left, but often they are threatened by the on-going enclosure movement. With the recent economic and financial crisis, the commons has also been re-emerging as a potential alternative for the neoliberal system. In this light new types of commons have been emerging. Out of these “many galaxies of commons” (Bollier, 2014, p. 127) the most strong one might be the digital commons –like Wikipedia- that developed on the breeding ground of technological innovations and the Web. Another galaxy that is emerging is the one in which the overall work of Commons Josaphat can be positioned; the galaxy of the urban commons (Bollier, 2014; P2P Foundation & Transnational Institute, 2017).

Research on the urban commons³ is relatively new, and practitioners and scholars are still looking how to obtain a better understanding and to develop them further. The urban commons are directly linked to spaces and places, but at the same time are also embedded in the broader organization of society. The “urban” thus can also be related to an urban collectivity; the city in its relational and immaterial sense. In this light, the city -as the place where all the facets of everyday life come to bare- forms an interesting and challenging scene for the (re-)emergence of the commons. More strongly connected to public space, urban commons –and the commoning processes that come inherently with them- redefine space as a process. Urban commons as spaces –processes- through which social relations are expressed and in which rules of sharing are formed. In the words of Daphne Büllesbach in “Shifting the Baselines” (European Alternatives, Büllesbach, Cille-ro, & Stolze, 2017, p. 16): “It is often the city, the space of social and cultural condensation, that provides the breeding ground for new ideas and formations...”

A growing interest in the urban commons cannot only be found in the activism of Commons Josaphat. The 2016 Conference on Urban Commons of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) organized in Bologna, Italy (IASC, 2015) accumulated a significant share of the research on the topic. This venue was not

3 For which I base my theoretical knowledge on the following references: (Borch & Kornberger, 2015; Dellenb-augh et al., 2015; IASC, 2015; Shareable, 2017; Stravides & Verlic, 2016).

111

coincidently located in the city that pioneered with the “local regulation on collabora-tion between citizens and the municipality to care, regenerate and reuse urban commons”

(Ciaffi & Saporito, 2017; Comune di Bologna, 2015), which addresses the urban envi-ronment as “a collaborative social ecosystem” (Bollier, 2017). Furthermore, the recently established European Assembly of the Commons (ECA) opened a working group on

“The Right to the City” at their Assembly in Madrid, October 2017 (European Com-mons Assembly, 2017a, 2017b). In Belgium, increased awareness on the potential of ur-ban commons can be marked by the development of the Commons Transition Plan for the city of Ghent (Bauwens & Onzia, 2017) and research into the commons of Flanders and Brussels (Pak & Scheerlinck, 2015)⁴.

Besides various practices of urban commons are disseminated in the “Make_Shift City”

publication by Francesca Ferguson (2014) or are listed in the “Sharing Cities” book by Shareable (2017). These publications do not only show that there are many interesting examples, but that these also touch upon different themes of urban life. The discussed projects often impact on a small and local scale. They are acts of the reclaiming and transforming of urban spaces as/into a commons and as such provide a foothold within the design and development of the urban environment.

More and more community-based city making initiatives are becoming recognized or labeled as urban commons. Though; the broader effects of such hands-on approach-es –on their own or in their collectivity- need to be further discussed, practiced and researched. Weather how small, practices of urban commons act at numbers levels and manifest the right to the city (Harvey, 2008). And although some practices of urban commons managed to scale out and become distributed over different geographical areas; it is clear that urban commons -like the traditional natural ones- have no one-size fits all formula available(Bader & Liesegang, 2014; Borch & Kornberger, 2015).

As concrete utopias, practices of urban commons rethink the city. As a political pro-cess, the urban commons make and reclaim urban –often public- spaces to be managed collectively and stand against neoliberal mechanisms of individualization and prof-it-driven agenda’s. In practice, urban spaces offer laboratories for coexistence in the city and self-organization of citizens (Bader & Liesegang, 2014; Borch & Kornberger, 2015;

Dellenbaugh et al., 2015; Ferguson, 2014; Shareable, 2017).

It is in this movement of urban commoning that I want to position the communi-ty-oriented initiatives at Josaphat’s ground. Related to the commons claim by CJ, these self-proclaimed transitional activities can be related both to the theoretical underpin-ning of the urban commons as well as referential practices in the field of urban archi-tectural design. Although I am aware not all my peers at Josaphat’s ground might agree, I claim that the self-organized urban interventions that I will further discuss in this chapter can be labeled as urban commons initiatives.

c. A kitchen, a garden, a house, and something more.

The doctoral design practice is made up of several uAD interventions that are ground-ed on Josaphat and which I –as architect-research and architect-writer- claim to be practices of urban commoning.

4 Many more venues could be listed; I chose to mention these as throughout the design-based participatory action research of this dissertation I have been in contact with these projects.

112

For this, “three plus one” uAD interventions will be discussed. This selection is motivated by the symbolic strength of each of these interventions as they represent an essential element of life. The tripartite consists of the garden of “Jardin Latinis” that was the first arrival at Josaphat’s self-proclaimed transitional use. The second is its follow-up intervention for a mobile kitchen on site; “Recup’Kitchen”. And to conclude the third intervention consists of a house built through the “Maison des Possibles” project. A gar-den, a kitchen, and a house. Together the gargar-den, kitchen, and house embody archetypi-cal structures affiliated with the essence of our living environment.

In Dutch “huis-tuin-en-keuken”, (house-garden-and-kitchen) is an expression and adjective used to describe the common nature of something. It entails the notion of

“household, common-or-garden” (Van Dale, 2018). It connects back to the everyday and has a connotation of banality and simplicity. It embraces the existential building blocks of our life.

In addition to these house-garden-and-kitchen interventions, I will add on the some-what invisible work embedded in the “Josaph’Aire” nonprofit. This support infrastruc-ture has emerged as an outcome of –amongst other self-proclaimed transitional uses- the house, garden, and kitchen agencies, and has been created to enable the collectivity of these initiatives at Josaphat. Although not bringing about any significant spatial changes, to me Josaph’Aire symbolizes the reproductive work underlying the self-pro-claimed transitional uAD and related commoning processes. Josaph’Aire (JA) carries within its juridical entity a vague promise of future continuation and federalization.

In extension the combination of the three design interventions and the more invisible work embedded in JA. The concept of “huis-tuin-en-keuken” in the context of this doc-toral research and design practice is conceptualized as “commons”, in this referencing to the commons-oriented values underlying the kitchen, garden, and house with some-thing more embodied in the JA nonprofit. With this, I introduce the notion of “com-mons architecture” to embody the uAD practice embedded in this tripartite plus one at Josaphat’s self-proclaimed transitional use.

In my experience the “huis”, “tuin” and “keuken” all in their particular way take on stewardship over a common good; ranging from food production and consumption over our natural environment and its resources to the disciplines of architecture and urban production. The three plus one uAD interventions are conceptualized, realized and governed by self-organized communities that are currently still developing and consolidating the collective stewardship and care-taking of these commons –taking up commoning processes. Together – and more strongly represented by Josaph’Aire- they bring out a movement. Within their specific context situated in the urban environment of Brussels and at the in-between condition of Josaphat as wasteland and

In my experience the “huis”, “tuin” and “keuken” all in their particular way take on stewardship over a common good; ranging from food production and consumption over our natural environment and its resources to the disciplines of architecture and urban production. The three plus one uAD interventions are conceptualized, realized and governed by self-organized communities that are currently still developing and consolidating the collective stewardship and care-taking of these commons –taking up commoning processes. Together – and more strongly represented by Josaph’Aire- they bring out a movement. Within their specific context situated in the urban environment of Brussels and at the in-between condition of Josaphat as wasteland and