The notion of “commons” unites open resources of any kind: natural, cultural, spatial, material and immaterial – of which ownership and access is shared. These common resources need to be maintained, as do the collection of practices that govern and preserve them. Yet Georgia’s rapid shift to a neoliberal political system in the 1990s resulted in a new understanding of these commons – resources that are open for commodification and individualization. As finite resources, these commons need to be sustained, nurtured and managed by communities and professionals. Architects, urbanists and state institutions have a fundamental role to play in the reclamation of the commons – no more so than in Tbilisi.
The second edition of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, which is conceived under the name What Do We Have in Common proposes to take a closer look at the notion of commonness in our increasingly individualized and fragmented societies. After the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union, several barely recognized countries were added to the world map. These newly born “post-socialist” states had to undergo an inevitable but painful transformation from planned to market economy – economic transition that has been expressed in both the city’s cultural norms and its urban fabric. A “collectively” organized society became increasingly individualized, the planned urban spaces turned into more fragmented and divided ones.
Entire process of urban and socio-economic transition seemed to forget the feeling of common space and collectivity. Spaces of common inhabitation and collective use have become predominantly infrastructural, turning into spaces of transition and uninterrupted functionality. In our local reality the post-soviet spatial, political and social transformation has been accompanied by many new understandings and an urban vocabulary. The understanding of common space has developed into a very complex issue. By questioning the notion of the “common” we would like to address several layers of urban space in Tbilisi, and explore the internal and external, the material and imaginary, through examining the significance of the transformation processes and the consequences it has had on common space. The staircases, neighborhood patios, thresholds, roofs of the residential blocks, public parks and squares, rarely or unused public/private buildings, shared self-governed open spaces – they all belong to the beginnings of a “common” urban vocabulary that we attempt to enrich, study and research, by investigating ownership structures, “common” space transformations, everyday spatial common practices, the spaces of resistance and much more.
ARCH+ as well started 2018 within the project An Atlas of Commoning: Places of Collective Production – an international touring exhibition by the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) in cooperation with ARCH+ – to unfold a network of ideas for a concept of commoning that aims for solidarity and emancipation, one that doesn’t bring individuals into line within the community but turns the unique, the different, and the special into decisive qualities of togetherness.