Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future

The cities of the world stand at a crossroads. Amidst radical social, economic, and technological transformations, will the city become a driving force of creativity, diversity, and sustainability, or will it be a mechanism of inequality, despair, and environmental decay? At this critical moment, where do the stakes lie and what are the agents of change? From the time of its birth, the city has been held together by the commons.
The book includes essays by Alejandro Zaera, Hyungmin Pai, Maider Llaguno, Nerea Calvillo, Hyewon Lee, Lindsay Bremner, Alex Ivancic, Iñaki Abalos, Charles Waldheim, David Gissen, Carlo Ratti, Daniele Belleri, Antoine Pico, Saskia Saseen, Adam Greenfield, Jesse LeCavalier, Philip Rode, Duncan McLaren, Julian Agyeman, Gunter Pauli, Gramazio and Kohler, Mario Carpo, Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska, Felix Heisel, Mitchell Joachim, and Christian Hubert. The first publication of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, proposes a framework that sets basic commons ? an evolving network of agencies, resources and technologies ? as the critical issue in the move towards a sustainable and just urbanism. It shows an exploration not of distant utopias, but of the very near future, because the emerging commons is changing the way we connect, make, move, recycle, sense, and share, and the way we manage air, water, energy and the earth. Whether met with fear or hope, they will very soon change the way we live in the city.

Hyungmin Pai is an architectural historian, critic, and curator. He received his Ph.D. from the History, Theory, and Criticism program at MIT. Twice a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Washington University in St. Louis and was visiting scholar at MIT and London Metropolitan University. He is author of The Portfolio and the Diagram, Sensuous Plan: The Architecture of Seung H-Sang, and The Key Concepts of Korean Architecture. For the Venice Biennale, he was curator for the Korean Pavilion (2008, 2014), and a participant in the Common Pavilions project (2012). In 2014, the Korean Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation. He was Visiting Director of the Asia Culture Center (2014–15) and Head Curator for the Gwangju Design Biennale (2010–11). He is presently a professor at the University of Seoul. He serves as a member of the Presidential Committee for the Hub City of Asian Culture, the Mayor’s Committee for the Future of Seoul, and is the chair of the Mokchon Architecture Archive.

Alejandro Zaera-Polo is an award-winning architect and a tenured professor at Princeton University. His career has consistently merged the practice of architecture with continued theoretical and academic engagement. He was trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (Hons), and holds a Master in Architecture from the Harvard GSD (with Distinction). He worked at OMA in Rotterdam (1991–93), prior to establishing FOA in 1993, and AZPML in 2011. He was the dean of Princeton School of Architecture (2012–14) and of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (2000–5). He was the inaugural recipient of the Norman Foster professorship at Yale University School of Architecture (2010–11), and has lectured widely and internationally at institutions such as the AA School, Columbia GSAPP, UCLA, and Yokohama University. His texts can be found in many professional publications such as El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Log, AD and Harvard Design Magazine, and many of them are collected in The Sniper’s Log (2012).