The monolithic ‘public’

The AR July/August issue examines public space; questioning its authenticity and seeking its true beneficiaries. We celebrate the commended projects of the inaugural AR Public awards, which carve new hope into our contested landscape.

The inaugural AR Public awards are a celebration of open and accessible public spaces – a ‘versatile, if unevenly distributed, resourcescape’, as Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago calls them in this issue’s keynote (p6). In Paris’s periphery (p70), Dhaka (p80), Guiyuan Village in China (p88), Singapore (p98), London (p108) and Bangkok (p116), this year’s commended projects demonstrate the ways in which public spaces can be carved out of the built environment.

For two and a half years, risks of contamination and waves of infections have justified punitive restrictions on public life around the world. As the pandemic continues, health measures tip dangerously towards excessive control and attacks on civil liberty (p30). The essays in this issue examine some of the powerful forces that continually encroach upon public spaces, whether they be the economic imperatives that govern the late capitalist city or the anti‑democratic political regimes that grab public land and cordon it off (p22).

Public spaces are designed and created, but also appropriated and fought for. The affordances of such spaces are never singular, nor are their publics. ‘I wonder whose body a lot of public spaces relate to,’ says David Gissen, ‘because they certainly don’t relate to mine’ (p45), while Timmah Ball notes that ‘even writing about public space feels inherently western’ (p16). Together, the voices in this issue question assumptions about who – or what – the monolithic ‘public’ is, advocating spaces that make room for difference.

Read the full article on The Architectural Review

Authors: Manon Mollard, Eleanor Beaumont, Ellen Peirson, Kristina Rapacki

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