> The Art of Common Space

Art, politics, commerce and culture all unfold in space that is essentially public — civic, common, shared. Our social relationships are sculpted by the architecture and design of space. That is perhaps why architecture is so essentially political, even when it is not intended to be; why culture is common, even when it is insular and parochial; why design speaks to how and even whether we live together.

The linkages between art, architecture and design and the manner in which we live our shared political and cultural destinies turn out to be determinative in ways that are often invisible but always critical.

In CivWorld’s joint international research project on the Art of Common Space, which arose out of collaborative work with Gunpowder Park and Haring Woods Associates, a group of artists, urban planners, engineers, democratic theorists and commercial developers explore the many innovative approaches that have emerged in recent years that utilize art and architecture in thinking about common space and democracy. These approaches include engineering designs that address poverty, ecology and human suffering in the third world as well as cultural paradigms that address anomie, privatization and commercialism in the first world.

A major seminar meeting of the research group — that included many partners of the Paradigm Project — was held at Interdependence Day in Mexico City, September, 2007. Five more gatherings will take place: May 2008 in London hosted by Haring Woods and Gunpowder Park; CivWorld’s Interdependence Day on September 10-12 in Brussels; Berlin with the Hertie Institute in October 2008; New York City in Spring 2009 and at Interdependence Day 2009 tentatively set for Istanbul, Turkey.

We have learned from Machiavelli and Rousseau to speak of the art of politics. But there is a deeper, anti-ideological politics of art — a civic architecture of the commons — whose lessons are yet to be learned.