Exhibition

  • An Atlas of Commoning: Spaces of Collective Production
    Morehshin Allahyuari, Manuel Herz, and Samson Young
    Artists
    Stefan Gruber, Anh-Linh Ngo, Christian Hiller, Mirko Gatti, and Max Kaldenhoff
    Curators
    Miller ICA, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
    Jun 29, 2019 to Sep 22, 2019
  • GRANTEE
    Stefan Gruber
    GRANT YEAR
    2018

Community Forge, Wilkinsburg, Pittsburgh. Photo: Stefan Gruber. Courtesy of STUDIOGRUBER.

From the management of collective kitchens to that of global resources, from urban squatters to digital sharing platforms, the commons has entered the political discourse equally challenging patriarchal domestic spaces and capitalist market logics. The exhibition and publication An Atlas of Commoning explores the possible role and agency of architecture within such spaces of communing through a vast international selection of artworks, films, architectural projects, historical and contemporary case studies. Curated and produced in collaboration with ARCH+, Germany's leading journal for architectural theory, and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, the exhibition opens in Berlin before travelling to Pittsburgh and beyond. Questions posed include, what emancipatory potential does the concept of commoning offer in the face of global finance capitalism? Can we produce truly inclusive commons that expand beyond the limits of community? How can we re-think ownership, production and citizenship to imagine new ideas of collective governance? These and other fundamental questions take visitors across different worlds of sharing into a speculative Atlas of Commoning.

Stefan Gruber is the Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Master of Urban Design program. His work spans design-built projects, urban design, and research with a particular focus on spatial practices and the political as articulated through the negotiation of top-down planning and bottom-up transformations of cities. His research includes Spaces of Commoning, documented in the eponymous book (Sternberg Press, 2016). Other books include a social fiction The Report with Stealth.unlimited and Paul Currion (MAK, 2015) and Big! Bad? Modern (Park Books, 2015). Gruber founded STUDIOGRUBER in 2006 after working with Diller, Scofidio+Renfro. From 2006–10 he was a professor for geography, landscape, and cities at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His research and design work have been published and exhibited internationally and supported by a Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and an Akademie Schloss Solitude fellowship, among others.