Studio Muoto | Shatotto | Atelier Untitled Architects | Serie Architects | Multiply Architects | HÛT Architecture | M Space | Beda Amuli | Michael Sorkin
AR July/August 2022
For two and a half years, risks of contagion have justified restrictions on public life around the world, at times tipping towards punitive control and attacks on civil liberty. The essays in this issue examine some of the forces that encroach upon public spaces, whether they be the economic imperatives that govern late capitalist cities or anti‑democratic political regimes that grab common land. The affordances of public spaces are never singular and neither are their publics. The voices in this issue question assumptions about who – or what – the monolithic ‘public’ is, advocating spaces that make room for difference. Also featured are the commended projects of the inaugural AR Public awards, which take us from Paris, Dhaka, and Guiyuan Village in China, to Singapore, London and Bangkok. Public spaces are complex and often imperfect – a ‘versatile, if unevenly distributed, resourcescape’, to use Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago’s phrase – but as the pandemic continues, it is crucial that designers and publics continue to negotiate them.
Public
Keynote: Publicity, Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago
Reputations: Michael Sorkin, Kate Wagner
Unceded land, unpublic use, Timmah Ball
Reclaiming Asunción, Laurence Blair
Pockets of promise in Gugulethu, Kathryn Ewing
Outrage: Legacies of Covid-19 in Shanghai, Flora Ng
Revisit: Kariakoo market in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania by Beda Amuli, Valerie Amani
Rest in public as resistance, Marie-Louise Richards
Interview: David Gissen, Natalie Kane
Books: Wild public, Max L Zarzycki
Theatre: In England’s green and pleasant land, Caspar Salmon
Building: Saclay campus hub in Paris-Saclay, France by Studio Muoto, Kristina Rapacki
Building: Rasulbagh children’s park in Dhaka, Bangladesh by Shatotto, Luva Nahid Choudhury
Building: Luobei community centre in Guiyuan Village, China by Atelier Untitled Architects, Jacob Dreyer
Building: Oasis Terraces in Singapore by Serie Architects with Multiply Architects, Razvan Ghilic-Micu
Building: Bulwer Road garden in London, United Kingdom by HÛT Architecture, Ellen Peirson
Building: Dadfa market in Bangkok, Thailand by M Space, Pirasri Povatong
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