INTRODUCTION
Architecture Under a Commons Lens
Marcelo López-Dinardi
It is November 2022. It would be safe to say that almost the entire planet shares an idea of what a pandemic and the Covid-19 virus are, despite some public beliefs about it. Our gigabit-hyper-connected world is filled with the air that enables our existence, the same that allowed the virus to travel from territory to territory and from droplets to nostrils into bodily yet networked respiratory systems. The radical technologies that emerged during the turn of the century and consolidated our planetary enclosure made possible an instant transmission of audiovisual documents of the ongoing biological calamity. Even our psychological selves seem to be more collective than individual. The world appeared to halt for moments, but the incessant apparatus of global capital never stopped pulsating; sadly, people did. It is now evident that our lives are forever entrenched and bound with these polymorphous planetary to biological enclosures.
This book departs from exhaustion and isolation and is informed by relational thought;1 the exhaustion of life, bodies, and environments; the burnout culture;2 and the desperate search for compassionate forms of engagement for architecture against the isolation and alienation of our times.3 It also departs from the exhaustion of recurrent ideas about architecture and the concept of the public. It is a response and a proposition, not a forecast or a theory. The book also departs from the undeniable precarity of our existence—the personal and shared, palpable in the climate emergency. It recognizes the urgency for rethinking architecture’s forms of engagement within our planetary enclosures. The convener of these words is trained primarily in architectural design under a Western, dominant, and aspiring idea of architecture. This book project is, however, not a strict reflection on architecture—or architectural examples per se, but a proposal to
expand, or extend that centuries-old legacy of our work as service to the public, or a public, for that of the commons.
Silvia Federici’s and the Midnight Notes Collective’s new enclosures recognized the existence of a system of uprooting workers and their exploitation at a planetary scale since the mid-1970s.4 We now live in the consequences of those large-scale shifts in global extraction, production, consumption, and accumulation with evident roots in the earlier colonial, modern project. I hope I do not need to cite countless books on this. The consequences are undeniable as they are devastating. Today, however, added dimensions have taken control over our so-called biopower. Byung-Chul Han has explored the psychological and nervous system implications of this psychopolitical technologies of power.5 A dominant business ontology and a digitally multiplied finance are omnipresent in the choreographed dance of neurons, logistics, and satellital desires.6 Vast networks of tools bind our existence from bodily cells to celestial matter. From submarineoptical fiber communications cables or fracking the near depths of the millionsyear-old ground formations to orbiting satellites signaling waves back to land or relaying hallucinating images from the beyond times, we make and practice this world every day.7 Architecture is, like many others, one such cultural phenomenon that makes, reproduce, and participate in these multi-scalar choreographies. This multi-scalar fascination is familiar to architectural thought. Our contemporaries have built upon those obsessions. The famous Powers of Ten (1977) from the celebrated Eames couple merged technology and scale into a powerful visual narrative invoking the transformation of our human species—through a man, from cells to planets. Yet, it is still anthropic, after all, this film is centered on the powers of ten in a man’s hand in a city park. More recently, Andrés Jaque and Ivan L. Munuera and the Office for Political Innovation produced The Transscalar Architecture of Covid-19, a visual tour de force of the impact of the pandemic on an already exhausted planet.8 These works are evidencing atomic and infrastructural size connections between bodies and planetary scale elements. The inevitability of trans-scalar thought. Both audiovisual works attempt to bridge the scales of our relational life as subjects of the planet and in the planet.
A Note on the Public
The public, in its multiple forms, has officially represented the figure of our idealized collective and the body politic where it is manifested. This nomenclature is born from its association with the participants of nation-states—and the ones at the margins of or expulsed from and, in principle, with democratic systems. The commons, on the contrary, has one origin in the definition of property and the enclosure of land in early 17th century England, while other definitions align with earthly resources available and understood as shared goods. Both scenarios present, as briefly suggested earlier, the problem of the organization of social
life in a collective manner, or in its institutional forms including language. It also introduces the question, under a broad public rubric, of the management of such resources, and their territorial implications. But today there are additional pressures built over the past five decades of development of the neoliberal doctrine. One critique of the neoliberal rationale and its consequences of life as an economic regime was built on the atomization of the public and the alienation of its members. In doing so, it has challenged the existence of collective forms of the body politic in its various manifestations including cities. Wendy Brown has theorized this bodily fragmentation as an affront to the “basis of democratic citizenry” and, in consequence, a crisis of “political sovereignty” in the act of “undoing the demos.”9 The demos figure here is not dissimilar to Hannah Arendt’s body of the public—this is the subjects that make the people in the space of a democratic society. In Brown’s discussion, it is inevitable not to see the parallel of the construction of sovereignty through a primarily Westerncentered articulation of the public in its traditional nomenclature of a people of a place, a city, or a nation-state who shape a democratic system. While pointing this—and even in agreement with Brown’s claim of the threat to current forms of democracy at the hands of the homo oeconomicus, I am suggesting to bypass— suspend the correlation of this understanding of people and the concept of the public. However, I am hoping for an expanded reading of architecture’s role in engaging the traditional idea of the public, given the diversity of elements we pledge within its production.
Although the scope of these words is far from entering into a direct conversation with those of Brown and others, the dyad body-politic situates the public and its place of appearance at the center—a phenomena familiar to architecture. As such, the political dimension of the concepts of public will always find a wall as their theorization is inevitably bound by the nation-state, its subjects, and its protocols. In that equation, the primary construction of its constituents relies on the public’s exhausted, depleted, and incomplete conception for today’s world. In addition, as architectural historian Reinhold Martin’s words, Publics and Common(s) suggests, these proto-democratic societies were built upon exclusionary, exploitative, or extractive practices. The commons are proposed here as a concept from political theory that, in an extension to its form in that field, could arguably, serve as a lens that complements the public in architecture to redirect it to a non-demos, non-nation-state centered form. A broader definition of the commons is brought here as a lens for architecture, not as a substitution for the political in the concept of the public.
The epistemology of what is public in architecture in its “pre-modern” and modern versions is strictly aligned with the Western model that originated in ancient Greece and extrapolated to the modern project of nation-states. For decades, this notorious model recreated ad infinitum has insisted on reinstating a notion of public associated with those concepts of people and space. However, it is
not significantly discussed that even in ancient times, these spaces and the protodemocratic societies our world is built upon were exclusionary from the beginning. Not only exclusionary of women and enslaved subjects but of a pluriverse of cosmovisions pertaining to our short millennia of existence as species.
The proposal of architecture from public to commons does not intend to substitute the politics of the architect or the politics of architecture. Instead, its main aim is to overcome the representational paradigm embodied in it—and the conundrum it creates in architecture, to pave the way for relational forms of engagement between bodies, species, materials, protocols, scales, histories, languages, and a multiplicity of elements that, following Arturo Escobar and others, offer the possibility of a pluriverse beyond a dominant Western humanism.10 This representational paradigm has subjected architectural discourse in many forms, including the city as its traditional site, and similar to the exhaustion of the concept of the public, its limits are at direct odds with a transition to a nondemos planetary consciousness.
The City, Urban Commons
Practitioners and scholars have long engaged with the urban commons as a site and form of resistance to the struggles manifested in those spaces particularly as the embodied forms of capitalist accumulation. The defense for a just and inclusive place inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s Le Droit à la Ville from 1968 and cultivated by geographer David Harvey and many others articulate the city as the site for resources and access making the city your own, a commons. Stavros Stavrides, one of the key thinkers of commons within architecture, recognizes the role of cities as the urban orders of capitalist reproduction and the limits of notions of public and private space. In his book The City as Commons, he offers the idea of commons space as a rubric to pursue a renewed idea of the city. He writes, “Common space can be considered as a relation between a so-called group and its efforts to define a world that is shared between its members.”11 Still useful and active, this principle seems to rely primarily on Arendt’s notion of the space of appearance, and in the analogy she used for the table.12 A critical distinction from this project from public to commons to that of the urban commons or the city commons is the invitation to expand the definition of, in Stavrides roles, its members. This book project also proposes to move away from the concept of world to that of planet, or earth, in doing so, expanding the repertoire of elements and members beyond ideas of urbanization. What constitutes the commons? Who participates in it? I would suggest it is not only a question of who but also what its members or elements are, a key bridge to think about architecture. These questions emerge here in the context of planetary urbanization and ask us to, even when operating in these environments—megalopolis, towns, or rural villages, to consider the relational
quality of human and non-human, ecological, and cultural (social) phenomena, beyond their scope of place. Although locality will continue to be a critical tool to approach our work, it will benefit from a more extensive understanding of the relational nature of our planetary existence.
In this book, architecture, as seen through a commons lens, does not preclude nor frame the commons as a form based on urban practices but considers it one such mode of it. The texts included here and this proposition extend an invitation to decenter the city as a site. It prefers the language of ecology, habitats, cycles, ecosystems, environments, more than that of the urban realm, particularly when understood as a whole. The concept of the city encompasses so much that a commons lens may help see and identify processes and territories that overlap more than through usual definitions. In a significant way, this asks us to directly consider the scale of the elements that participate in architecture. The elements of the architecture of the building, but also in the architecture of our relations, habitats, technologies, and indeed our education. Without stepping too much into the city or urban field for too long, the binaries of urban-rural, urban dweller-peasants, and educated-non-educated have forced us to construct the peoples of these territories subjected to them reproducing the pitfalls of the modern project as visible in urban form. There is no question about the role of the city as a site of capitalist reproduction, labor exploitation, and accumulation, but it is ever more becoming a limited trope for the entangled and dislocated nature of our planetary relations and extractive practices.
All forms of urbanization, a modern heritage product, were possible because of the non-urban conditions of the sites of resources extraction—think about food, materials, energy, these sites can be understood, even if momentarily, as exo-urban spaces, since the larger product they make is not grains or fruits or petroleum or gas, but cities and commerce and logistics. Even if cities are an illustrative and material legacy of colonial societies, reflecting on them as a site keeps re-centering them as an entity that, in theory, could be resolved.13 From public to commons, ask us to reconsider this phenomenon if we plan to transition to a non-destructive, non-extractive form of planetary life at all ends of the supply, logistics, and imaginary chains.
A Commons Lens
The word architecture is in the title of this book as a departing point, not a contention figure. It is not a retreat from it, nor a tool guide.14 Architecture remains here as a subject that needs to be both continued to be practiced yet undone through and in dialogue with what is proposed as a commons lens. Architecture is plural enough to follow a single canon. The word from speaks of a transition and a traveled road. Here, from public to commons is both. In times of urgent paradigmatic transitions, it is a transition of ideas associated with the concept of
the public to the concept of the commons. It is also a road that offers the opportunity to look back and look forward to articulating ideas for architecture. Readers can situate themselves in this transition or any part of a narrow or wide road. The proposition is to recognize our atomized existence on a planetary scale. It is not a dividing or fragmenting political project but a dialogue of scales, territories, and beings—a pluriverse within our universe of ideas.
One aspect to highlight from the roads traveled are the formats of work that have challenged an individual-benefit output. These models are associated with cooperative, mutual aid, and spatial and care practices.15 All have explored, past and present, collective forms of association with direct consequences in social, cultural, and environmental relations. The lens for the commons proposed here is inclusive of these modes of practice and considers them part of the realm of ideas in direct dialogue with a commons sensibility. Spatial practices, mainly, have served for decades as a method and space for working in dialogue with architectural issues bridging worlds. Supported by the earlier ideas of the 1995 volume Spatial Practices16 to the multiple projects and practices interweaving a beyond-architectural notion of space and place, these forms of engagements have allowed relational exchanges to emerge. In addition, the ideas of participatory practices that emerged during the late 1960s as questioning and critique of architecture and urban planning play a significant role in shaping the commons sensibility explored in these pages.
The commons are not like architecture or the public since they have not been appropriated entirely by ideologies coerced onto them—not even communism, even if it sounds like it. Commons are still a concept perceived as exogenous to architecture, not invisible, yet foreign. The commons in this book are problematized by their various forms and definitions as land act and ownership that emerged from the English case, as natural resources believed to have a shared benefit, to micro-practices of sovereignty and decentralized governing, to the act of practicing the commons or commoning. But why the commons for architecture?
One crucial fact to consider about the commons is the root of its definition before the Inclosure Acts began in 1604 England since it served as a precedent for privatizing and exploiting land as a resource. This land protocol became one of the major underpinnings of the development of the colonial project and its implementation at a global scale. From where I write, the United States of America combined this practice of appropriating land as property and embraced it as a model to develop its original power by displacing, erasing its native inhabitants, and making people property through the enslavement of African people. The model of property and privatization became one of the predominant models for life since the world power’s colonization project, with significant consequences in its newest forms today. In this longer arc of time, the idea of an environmental resource shared for everyday sustenance was negated with the
practice of property, extraction, production, and accumulation in primarily capitalist societies—even the forced ones that are perhaps the majority. Although the socialist experiment led by the Soviet Union promised a form of commonality, their implementation failed to reproduce collectivity without power domination and oppression and perhaps contributed to a non-capitalist form of a neoliberal regime.17 Today, these centuries-old variations of enclosures act upon one another from land, to buildings, to bodies, to neurons.
The reasoning for the commons as suspended of ideological connotations motivates its use in this project. It does not suggest, as it may immediately seem, to depoliticize the commons or architecture, but it does aim to ask, can a commons lens serve as an alternative architectural imaginary instead of the exhausted lens of the original demos and the polis? Far removed from the time of agoras and exclusive nation-states, the production of architecture—and its education, can find in the broad spectrum of a commons imaginary renewed alternatives to conceive projects and practices based on non-extractive cultures. What does an architectural commons knowledge look like when it is not limited to its contemporary form of property satisfaction? How can the commons help becoming a pluriverse of cosmovisions beyond a public?
I will briefly elaborate on this idea through the work of two key thinkers of the commons, Silvia Federici and Elinor Ostrom. In a short book entry, Federici asks, The University: A Knowledge Common? It questions the university’s role as a center of knowledge production, boundaries, sources, and belonging. In her known emphasis on a women’s reproductive work lens, she interrogates the space of the university and what our idea of knowledge is if we are interested in a knowledge commons.18
We need to question the material conditions of the production of a university, its history, and its relation to the surrounding communities. Especially in the U.S., where so much of the land used by institutions was appropriated following the bloody dispossession of its former inhabitants, such a reckoning is essential.
We must also change our conception of what knowledge is and who can be considered a knowledge producer. Currently, knowledge production on the campuses is insulated from the broad infrastructural work that sustains academic life, which requires a multiplicity of subjects (cleaners, cafeteria workers, groundkeepers, etc.) making it possible for students and teachers to return to the classroom every day. Yet, like women’s reproductive work, this work too is mostly invisible.
There are two critical affirmations I want to highlight for us to consider. One is the need to expand knowledge production forms and subjects, for architecture, including its material conditions, from the space of the university and the
academies. This work should not be limited, as it is happening now, to grassroots groups doing on-ground work on the margins or as an exception, nor should it be subjected to professional industries. This task, more than ever, is crucial to validate architectural education—even as resistance, in the context of the neoliberalization of the universities and their research models.19 The other aspect of Federici that I want to highlight is her understanding of systems of reproduction. Learning from her work conceived through women’s reproduction and care, these practices manifest the work and labor, done daily, repeatedly, as infrastructure. Architecture significantly participates in the reproduction of daily life and would benefit from an intersectional reading of the agents (human and nonhumans) and elements (ecological and material) that are transformed into their products. Recognizing architecture’s infrastructural quality and its impact not as a singularity but as commonality can aid the way we shape up lessons and strategies to assemble it.
The work of Ostrom is the other I would briefly elaborate on. In her influential book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990), she problematizes the commons through empirical field research and the collective management of common-pool resources (CPR). She studied cases associated with land proprietorship, water extraction, and fisheries. One aspect of her extensive research is the acknowledgment of the independent variables of each case, tested among others with the use of games to articulate decision-making processes.20 In these cases, neither policy nor theory alone could absorb the specificities of each case or consider all the variables emerging from a single scenario. Emerging from political sciences and the economy, her work focused on organizational networks and their relational conditions for managing CPRs. Architecture has historically focused on the end product or either end—the before and after the implementation of architectural products. This is not to say that architecture is not full of organizational complexes or networked relations; on the contrary, its processes are more obscured and backgrounded than the foreground representation that characterizes it in its buildings. However, one may ask, can an independent-variables, relational model proven successful in a commons analysis be appropriated for architecture, where the focus is as much on the relation of elements as the end product as one more element on a larger and longer chain of events?
Questions of expertise threaten knowledge fields every day with a combination of dissolution or enhancement. However, in architecture, expertise has signified questionable disciplinary knowledge on one side or technical know-how on the other. In both cases, each of them treated as secluded, exclusionary, and institutionalized forms fail to account for Ostrom’s observed, documented variables in a commons-based framework. Ostrom’s ideas can be read as inherently relational, multiple, with special attention and care to the direct interactions of elements at play. Can architecture benefit from a commons lens whose principles
are relational, based on exchanges, and expand the focus of subjects-advantage to everyday wellbeing?
From Public to Commons
It is no surprise to recognize that the category of the public is insufficient to accommodate the bodies, elements, histories, and scales of our entangled lives. From modernity’s nation-state project in its multiple ideological forms to their imaginary in ancient Greece, the public was an exclusive body, spaces, and places that supported their constitution. Architecture, as we know, was vital in shaping, articulating, and constructing these forms of life based on an audience, the public. Eventually, apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, train stations, libraries, and court houses, were all part of the ensemble of architectural projects that aimed to shape the public. For decades—if not centuries, the myth of public space served as an equalizer for life, or to be specific, for the appearance of public life. A hegemonic world based on Western humanism was shaped by these dominant forms.
Arendt’s The Human Condition became a helpful tool in formulating categories for these rather abstract principles, the public realm, the space of appearance, the private, and the commons. Martin reviews these categories and asserts their scope and limits.21 “For Arendt,” writes Martin, “the polis constitutes a ‘space of appearance,’ in which being-in-public, or ‘publicity,’ is effectively synonymous with politics. More than simply a public square or forum, the space of appearance is potentially ubiquitous.” Architecture’s engagement with Arendt’s work is significantly rooted in the origination of public life in the fact or myth of the Greek polis. For too long, architecture positioned itself aligned with the Western civilizatory pre-modern project on cities that forcibly evolved through the industrial revolution and found in the city the site from where to articulate their struggles. From public to commons does not pretend to negate this condition but is interested in complicating its legacies to find renewed forms of engagement for architecture in our contemporary culture. Moreover, to be sure, consider architecture a form of engagement in the world beyond an end product.
Martin’s text perceptively discusses the correlation of the category of the public in dialogue with the work of Jürgen Habermas, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Nancy Fraser, and David Harvey. I will not rehearse that conversation here but will highlight a few notes important for this project. Martin agrees with the “exhaustion” of the category of the public and is interested in this discussion as a dialogue between political theory and form, the city, its protocols, and the state as a medium. By claiming the state as a ruined infrastructure, he asks if these ruins “might be reappropriated as media, or as fragments of a media system, in which life-in-common can take place.” This underpinning claim of Martin’s text situates the dialogue among the authors and the public commons as
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a system framed under the historical lens of the nation-state, its institutions, and its main scenarios—namely the city, or the metropolis, and a Marxist reading of relations between labor and production, even with differing projections.
In addition, Martin finds the conception of communication intrinsically close to the commons and asks Hardt and Negri if the realms of public and private— following their insufficiency, are to be replaced by a networked commons, “what will replace these mediators?” He follows by pointing to a shared critique of Hard and Negri and Habermas, saying,
In this sense Hardt and Negri’s common is subject to criticisms analogous to those that have been leveled at Habermas’s version of the public sphere. Not that it homogenizes otherwise heterogeneous subjectivities or submits them to the rule of an arbitrary norm; but rather that in subsuming the dyad singularity/multiplicity into a common, non-homogeneous substrate, it potentially underestimates the differentials, interferences, and asymmetries comprising that substrate’s communicative infrastructures.
The intersectional discussion between political theory and its spaces and agents is glossed by an insistence on seeing infrastructure as a medium. As such, the arguments are shaped towards reframing the concept of infrastructure as an apparatus, namely an urban apparatus.22
This book aims to situate the commons, and its political theory discussion, beyond its conception of an intrinsically urban system, including an apparatus. In doing so, it does not propose to negate or override the vast literature and practice of the urban as a contested scenario but to limit its implications as a concept that defines the possibility of a whole. It follows the long-standing critique of the public as a category utilized in architectural thought to define collectives and shared resources or spaces. Primarily, the work collected here proposes to see the commons not strictly as a political system but as a lens that can aid in negotiating at multiple scales the differentials, interferences, and asymmetries, not only of Martin’s communicative infrastructures but to all infrastructures—in shape or ruined, of the multi-scalar elements of our planetary life. In doing so, I would argue for architecture’s reduction—or suspension of the concept of the public and to explore a commons lens in a transition for an architecture from public to commons. A lens as a way of seeing, finding, and feeling the planet, a planet we are of not in.
The Scale of Commons
This book recognizes the emerging work of colleagues from scholars to designers and all who flow between critically engaging with our shared issues and trying to find ways to creatively navigate life on a fatigued planet. A key group
of people have been involved with commons sensibilities in Europe, particularly Germany. Among them, the work of Raumlabor from Berlin and others have explored questions of land ownership, housing, ecology, and design in their respective scenarios. Notably, the Floating University project embodies with critical imagination the possible worlds we still need to create.23 The publishing and curatorial work of dpr-barcelona and their respective collaborations with others, including the Urban Commons Handbook or the Adhocracy: From Making Things to Making the Commons exhibition in Athens (curated alongside Pelin Tan), have served as a reference to see how in those contexts these ideas have been put in practice or conceptualized.24 Another careful work confronting design and the commons is hosted in the pages of an ARCH+ journal issue titled An Atlas of Commoning: Places of Collective Production. 25 Primarily through the lessons of those projects and applied scenarios, the volume explores multiple practices engaging with urban commons. In the context of the U.S., it is just beginning to emerge as a topic of discussion. Notable examples are the recent exhibition, Reset: Towards a New Commons at the Center for Architecture26 in New York City, or the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 111th Annual Meeting titled In Commons 27 Others, like Jose Sanchez, have explored the connection of the commons with the tools and frameworks of digital systems and platforms.28 Following the longer arc of questions of a transition from public to commons, this book tries to, perhaps more reflectively, consider an intersectional reading of the commons in architecture in addition to implementing these ideas. It proposes two overall themes in a general order to account for the diversity and geographic differences of its contributions.
The book is organized under two broad themes, Institutions and Territories. Within them, diverse voices tell a story, share case studies, converse, document, or explore situations introduced here under a commons framework. The texts are not strictly departing from the commons existing literature. They are collected here through a commons lens for architecture to consider them. Given the relational dialogue of the voices included, this project is an unconventional collection. Ideally, we may seek alternatives for individual and collective challenges in a plethora of scenarios, lessons, and reflections emerging from these words. This book is ideally expansive, a collection of texts from authors within and outside the traditional field of architecture; it is not an architectural history anthology. It combines voices who work with words, images, spaces, exhibitions, or communities. The word voices here is not only to appeal to an individual in a collection, but to acknowledge that the works gathered here allow their authors to directly manifest their stories, with the support of bibliographical references, life-experience, or design or artistic work. Implicit in this assemblage is the aspiration to an intersectional dialogue not intended to dissolve expertise but to bridge and open forms of engagement that expand on it. The work is scholarly, argumentative, speculative, and directive. Following the two spacious
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themes organizing the book, under institutions fall the texts that seek to interrogate this concept with relation to architecture itself, with language and identity, the thresholds and scales of the practice of instituting, the design of institutional goods, collective organization, and questions of bodily autonomy. In territories, the texts engage with planetary racial narratives past and present, with environmentally contested sites, with indigenous and human rights territorial conflicts, land and property, with the neighborhood scale of climate accidents and opportunities, and the grounds for racial justice through design practices. Overall, these works are intended to support the possibility of architectures of transitions from public to commons, from world to planet, from extraction to care.
Although organized in a sequence, the reader may desire to flip back and forth and find additional connections. Institutions begin with an overview and direct focus on the practice of commoning by Pelin Tan, who has participated and engaged in forms of commoning for years now. Her text offers the opportunity to open a discussion of the scale of the commons, or thresholds, that will serve as a framework for the whole volume. Tan’s work comes from sociology and art practices in territories ranging from Turkey to Palestine and opens the relational dynamics of politics, space, and culture. We then travel to perhaps further away from the exact field of architecture to examine the impact of language in articulating an expansive project from public to commons. The work of poet and artist Amira Hanafi considers language as a material and invites us to contest the role of the body politic of the state in defining the language that governs us. Namely, the language in which this book is written. It questions which are “us” in the context of the H.R. Bill 997 of the United States Congress that intends to make English the official language of the country. Through an open invitation to people to rewrite the bill in as many languages are spoken in Turtle Island, or the North American territory, the text recognizes the extent to which we must expand our vocabulary, as well as our communication models beyond the hegemonic tendency of a world conceived of in one idiom.
The section follows with an honest reflection on the intense work within architectural institutions that Marina Otero Verzier has done over the last decade. Her commitment to exercising institutional alternatives and studying them allowed for a charged discussion of what is to practice within and outside their walls. It inevitably departs, however, with the acknowledgment of architecture as one such institution and edifice reproduced in museums, archives, or educational spaces. These three contributions set the framing for how to read the following pages as thresholds, transitions, and intersectional languages. To follow the discussion, we move to a promising work of a collective project of a statebacked design through the work of Fernando Portal and the inquiry of the life of everyday design objects conceived during the brief experiment of socialism in Chile with Salvador Allende. A convoluted story of forgotten blueprints, design ideas, ideological aspirations, and common goods, the text illustrates one face
of a project that, through anonymous subjects—institutional anonymity in this case, attempted to produce objects beyond their commodity value with a commons, shared purpose.
The following two texts elaborate on alternative modes of thinking ideas of land property and propriety through various neighborhood projects on one side and with a manifesto-like paranormal conversation-play between original authors and a Latin American group of multidisciplinary voices. First, Nandini Bagchee takes us on a journey of community-based work and the processes involved— with her own practice contributions, to contest the land property ownership model through the community land trust (CLTs) model. The work explores case studies in the context of New York City and exposes the challenges and opportunities of such model in the current battlefield to afford a decent place to live. Then, coopia, a multidisciplinary group gathering people from Abya Yala including Perú, Colombia, and México, engage in an active discussion, or revolt, of resistance and actions against architectural labor, against the rule of property and exploitation. In an imagined conversation between influential authors and their voices, they explore and argue the challenges of revolting and spatial-doings to think of architecture outside its primarily capitalist reproductive model. Spirited—in all senses and directive in tone, it concludes by pushing us aside from any form of institutional thinking that is not autonomous or anti-hegemonic.
The territories section begins with a personal and profound reflection of life built across continents in specific spatial conditions characteristic of their locations between Addis Ababa and Atlanta. This work, led by Emanuel Admassu from AD-WO, investigates the transformation of land and human relations in the context of the Ethiopian Ghebbi and suburban Atlanta passing through the scar of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, all as sites of Blackness. Here, land, seas, and bodies are interrogated as historical and current elements of one planetary scale transformation. This work is followed by, in contrast to the distance between oceans, the density of the Amazonian Rainforest. Luciana Varkulja delves into the practices associated with extracting ipê wood in the Brazilian Amazon. A material known for its strong weathering capacities long used in boardwalks in the United States for over a century, has become a precious element given its strength to harsh climates, creating, on the contrary, a weakened ecology for a rainforest system under threat of unconscious extraction, corruption, politics, and complicated voids of logistical chains.
Linda Schilling Cuellar grounds us on the Chilean coast of Los Vilos in the country’s central region and narrates the logic around water infrastructures and the misfortunes of that model in the experimental territory of neoliberal policies. In a place known for its geography and landscape, this project explores the dying commons of resources by inserting the complex operations of “public” benefit with extractive and exclusive accumulation. Failed sea-platforms for water salinization background the struggles for access to resources crucial to sustain
the region’s life. Further north in the continent and occupying a stretch of land that connects north and south commonly referred to as Central America, Elis Mendoza narrates the harrowing story of the events around Sepur Zarco, Guatemala. Her project combines a profound engagement with the Q’eqchi indigenous women and the patterns of structural violences they were subjected to in their own land. The text recounts the decades-long process of personal, social, and ecological healing and the legal fights in which a spatial practices work of forensic documentation and registration allowed them to succeed in court.
Taking us back to the familiar territories of urban scenarios, Janette Kim deeply engages with communities, actors, and lands that are subject to the climate crisis’s sway. Her work directly considers commons and commoning practices in two urban and landscape design scenarios that, following the tradition of Elinor Ostrom, produces a game to facilitate, experiment, and visualize the complex relations of individual versus collective benefit. In this process, the accidental commons emerge as a trope for examining the powerful local impact of the planetary climate emergency and the politics of dissent and agonism. Lastly, and in continuation with exploring the role of design justice in racially and socially contested territories, Bryan C. Lee Jr. argues that the built environment is a documentarian, a witness, and share his life experience supported with the work he leads at Colloqate Design from New Orleans, US, and the charge dynamics of power and place. The commons lens validates this experience by projecting the direct connection between people and their communities with the land they call home. In many cases, these projects build upon the centuries of Blackness formation that have rooted this side of the Atlantic and still struggle today for a safe and just environment.
The book’s postface summarizes the project that preceded this book, when its original ambition was to, before having developed the transitional ideas from public to commons, struggled to define the scope and limits of the former and the opportunities of the less subject-centered commons. This project, in a desperate act of creating connections and relations with colleagues worldwide during the deep stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Making the Public–Commons created an installation and a ten-non-stop hours conversations marathon forming a temporary trance space for relational exchange.
Lastly, this book is built upon years of testing and exploring the concepts of public and commons in different formats. First, my own work inquiring artarchitectural practices contesting the sites and location of architecture, engaging design, and urban sites in disenfranchised contexts, or the spatial implication of debt and colonial legacies. In addition, I have exchanged these ideas through architecture studios and an emerging commons consciousness in the field of architecture. Hopefully, the voices, case studies, and ideas presented here can stimulate a continuous engagement with rich and potential multi-scalar architectural challenges we must embrace with critical imagination for a sensible and joyful planetary life.
1 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Duke University Press, 2017), www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11smgs6
2 Byung-Chul Han and Erik Butler, The Burnout Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015); Byung-Chul Han and Erik Butler, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (London: Verso, 2017).
3 Marcelo López-Dinardi, Jimmy Bullis, and Pouya Khadem, “Forms of Engagement: In Conversation with Marcelo López-Dinardi,” PLAT, August 30, 2021, www. platjournal.com/ninepointfive/in-conversation-with-marcelo-lopez-dinardi.
4 Silvia Federici and Peter Linebaugh, Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons (Oakland, CA: PM, 2019), 28.
5 See note 2.
6 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Alresford: Zer0 Books, 2022); Franco Berardi, “Cognitarian Subjectivation,” e-flux Journal 20 (November 2010), www.e-flux.com/journal/20/67633/cognitarian-subjectivation/
7 The references appeal to the physical submarine wiring of the internet, the fossil fuel extraction practices, the multiplicity of satellites in space including the Worldview satellite by Google, and the recent composite images of the James Webb Space Telescope by NASA.
8 Andrés Jaque and Ivan Munuera, “The Transscalar Architecture of COVID-19,” in The World Around: Architecture’s Now (2020), https://theworldaround.com/.
9 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2020).
10 See Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020); Arturo Escobar, “Reframing Civilization(s): From Critique to Transition,” ARQ (Santiago), no. 111 (2022): 24–41, https://doi.org/10.4067/ s0717-69962022000200024; Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).
11 Stavros Stavrides, Common Space: The City as Commons (London: Zed Books, 2016), 54.
12 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 52.
13 See, for example, Pier Vittorio Aureli’s attempt to conceptualize this phenomenon in Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
14 There is an emerging scholarly work directly compiling and exploring architectural design and adjacent practices under the theme of the commons, see An Atlas of Commoning by Stefan Gruber, Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics and Ethics by Derya Özkan and Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç, or The Architecture of the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms by Jose Sanchez.
15 See, for example, the Critical Spatial Practices book series by Sternberg Press, www. sternberg-press.com/series/critical-spatial-practice-series/
16 See Helen Liggett and David C. Perry, eds., Spatial Practices (London: Sage Publications, 1995).
17 See Fritz Bartel, The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022).
18 Robert Lee, “See the Reference of the United States Land Grant Universities Origin,” Landgrabu.org, High Country News, 2020, www.landgrabu.org/
19 See in addition Reinhold Martin, Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2021);
López-Dinardi
Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson, Race and Modern Architecture a Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
20 Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–28.
21 Reinhold Martin, “Public and Common(s),” Places Journal (January 2013), accessed November 23, 2022, https://doi.org/10.22269/130124
22 Reinhold Martin, The Urban Apparatus: Mediapolitics and the City (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016).
23 For more on this project see https://floating-berlin.org
24 For the work of dpr-barcelona and the commons see https://dpr-barcelona.com/tag/ commons/
25 For more on the ARCH+ journal, in English see https://archplus.net/en/english-publi cations/an-atlas-of-commoning/ and German see https://archplus.net/de/ausgabe/232/
26 For more on the exhibition see www.centerforarchitecture.org/exhibitions/reset/
27 For more on the Annual Meeting see www.acsa-arch.org/conference/111th-annualmeeting/
28 See Jose Sanchez, Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms (London: Routledge, 2021).
References
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.
Bartel, Fritz. The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022.
Berardi, Franco. “Cognitarian Subjectivation.” e-flux Journal 20 (November 2010). www.e-flux.com/journal/20/67633/cognitarian-subjectivation/. Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2020.
Cheng, Irene, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson. Race and Modern Architecture a Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018.
Escobar, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
Escobar, Arturo. “Reframing Civilization(s): From Critique to Transition.” ARQ (Santiago), no. 111 (2022): 24–41. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0717-69962022000200024
Federici, Silvia, and Peter Linebaugh. Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Oakland, CA: PM, 2019.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Alresford: Zero Books, 2022. Han, Byung-Chul, and Erik Butler. The Burnout Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Han, Byung-Chul, and Erik Butler. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. London: Verso, 2017.
Jaque, Andrés, and Ivan Munuera. “The Transscalar Architecture of COVID-19.” In The World Around: Architecture’s Now, 2020. https://theworldaround.com/. Lee, Robert. “See the Reference of the United States Land Grant Universities Origin.” Landgrabu.org. High Country News, 2020. www.landgrabu.org/. López-Dinardi, Marcelo, Jimmy Bullis, and Pouya Khadem. “Forms of Engagement: In Conversation with Marcelo López-Dinardi.” PLAT, August 30, 2021. www.platjournal.com/ninepointfive/in-conversation-with-marcelo-lopez-dinardi Martin, Reinhold. “Public and Common(s).” Places Journal (January 2013). Accessed November 23, 2022. https://doi.org/10.22269/130124
Martin, Reinhold. The Urban Apparatus: Mediapolitics and the City. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
Martin, Reinhold. Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space: The City as Commons. London: Zed Books, 2016.
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Title: Chroniques de J. Froissart, tome 03/13 1342-1346 (Depuis la trêve entre Jeanne de Montfort et Charles de Blois jusqu'au siége de Calais)
Author: Jean Froissart
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Table
CHRONIQUES
SOMMAIRE.
CHAPITRE LI.
1342. ROBERT D’ARTOIS EN BRETAGNE[1] (§§ 181 à 192).
Édouard III donne de grandes joutes à Londres en l’honneur de la comtesse de Salisbury[2] dont il est toujours épris. Douze comtes, huit cents chevaliers, cinq cents dames et pucelles assistent à ces joutes qui durent quinze jours.—Noms des principaux chevaliers, tant d’Angleterre que d’Allemagne, de Flandre, de Hainaut et de Brabant.—Toutes les dames et les damoiselles s’y montrent parées de leurs plus beaux atours, sauf la comtesse de Salisbury qui s’y rend dans le plus simple appareil, tant elle désire ne pas attirer sur elle les regards du roi d’Angleterre. Jean, fils aîné de Henri vicomte de Beaumont d’Angleterre, périt dans une de ces joutes de la main du comte de Hainaut. P. 1 à 3, 197 à 201.
Édouard III envoie l’évêque de Lincoln proposer une trêve de deux ans au roi David d’Écosse qui, après l’avoir d’abord refusée, finit par l’accepter du consentement du roi de France son allié[3] . P. 4 à 7, 201 à 207.
Sur les instances de Jeanne de Flandre, comtesse de Montfort, qui a profité de la trêve[4] conclue entre elle et Charles de Blois pour aller en Angleterre demander du secours[5] , Édouard III donne à cette princesse son alliée une armée de mille hommes d’armes et de deux mille archers sous les ordres de Robert d’Artois, pour retourner en Bretagne. La flotte qui porte cette armée se compose de trente six vaisseaux grands et petits; en quittant l’île de Guernesey, elle se
rencontre avec une flotte au service du roi de France que commandent Louis d’Espagne, Charles Grimaldi et Ayton Doria. La flotte française ne se compose que de trente deux vaisseaux espagnols montés par mille hommes d’armes et trois mille Génois; mais parmi ces trente deux vaisseaux il y a neuf galées, dont trois plus fortes que les autres et montées par les trois amiraux en personne. Louis d’Espagne, qui veut prendre sa revanche de l’échec de Quimperlé, attaque les Anglais avec beaucoup d’impétuosité; toutefois l’action n’avait pu s’engager que dans l’après-midi, et une tempête qui survient, jointe à l’obscurité de la nuit, met fin à cette lutte et sépare les combattants. Les amiraux français, qui craignent d’être jetés à la côte avec leurs gros vaisseaux, gagnent à toutes voiles la haute mer, tandis que Robert d’Artois, chef de la flotte anglaise, réussit à jeter l’ancre dans un petit port, à quelque distance de Vannes[6] . P. 7 à 11, 206 à 211.
Pendant que Louis d’Espagne est poussé par les vents contraires jusque sur les côtes de Navarre et revient à grand peine à la Rochelle, puis à Guérande, après avoir capturé sur sa route quatre navires de Bayonne, la comtesse de Montfort et Robert d’Artois mettent le siége devant Vannes. Une forte garnison tient cette ville pour Charles de Blois sous les ordres de Hervé de Léon, d’Olivier de Clisson, des seigneurs de Tournemine et de Lohéac. Les Anglais pillent et brûlent tout le pays situé entre Dinan[7] , la Roche-Piriou[8] , Gouelet-Forest, la Roche-Bernard[9] et Suscinio[10] . Gautier de Mauny lui-même, après s’être tenu quelque temps à Hennebont, laissant cette forteresse sous la garde de Guillaume de Cadoudal, accourt sous les murs de Vannes avec Ivon de Trésiguidy, cent hommes d’armes et deux cents archers, pour renforcer les assiégeants. La ville est prise après un jour d’assaut, et Gautier de Mauny y entre le premier. Hervé[11] de Léon, Olivier de Clisson, les seigneurs de Tournemine, de Lohéac et les autres chevaliers du parti français n’ont pas le temps de se retirer dans le château, mais ils parviennent à se sauver. P. 11 à 16, 211 à 217.
Après la prise de Vannes, la comtesse de Montfort, Gautier de Mauny et Ivon de Trésiguidy rentrent à Hennebont, tandis que les comtes de Salisbury, de Pembroke, de Suffolk vont assiéger
Rennes. Quatre jours avant l’arrivée des Anglais devant Rennes Charles de Blois avait quitté cette ville, y laissant bonne garnison et s’était rendu avec sa femme à Nantes[12] . P. 11 à 17, 211 à 220.
Hervé de Léon et Olivier de Clisson font appel à Robert de Beaumanoir, maréchal de Bretagne, et à tous les partisans de Charles de Blois, pour reprendre Vannes à Robert d’Artois. Pierre Portebeuf, capitaine de Dinan, leur amène mille hommes; le capitaine d’Aurai, deux cents; Gérard de Mâlain, châtelain de la Roche-Piriou, deux cents; Renier de Mâlain, châtelain du Faouët, cent; le sire de Quintin, capitaine de Quimper-Corentin, cinq cents. Robert d’Artois est bientôt assiégé dans Vannes par des forces qui ne s’élèvent pas à moins de douze mille hommes; il est blessé à un assaut et n’a que le temps de se sauver par une poterne pour chercher un refuge à Hennebont. Édouard Spencer, fils de Hugh Spencer, est aussi blessé à cet assaut et ne survit que trois jours à sa blessure. Quant à Robert d’Artois, il repasse en Angleterre pour se guérir, mais les fatigues de la traversée empirent sa situation, et il meurt à Londres[13] , où Édouard III lui fait faire de magnifiques obsèques. P. 17 à 20, 220 à 224.
CHAPITRE
LII.
1342 ET 1343. ÉDOUARD III EN BRETAGNE[14] (§§ 192 à 202).
Le roi d’Angleterre jure de venger la mort de Robert d’Artois. De grands préparatifs sont faits dans les ports de Plymouth, de Wesmouth, de Darmouth et de Southampton. Édouard III prend bientôt la mer[15] avec deux mille hommes d’armes et six mille archers, et, après avoir côtoyé la Normandie, les îles de Guernesey et de Brehat, débarque en Bretagne, à quelque distance d’Hennebont où se tient la comtesse de Montfort; puis il va mettre le siége devant Vannes, que garde pour Charles de Blois une garnison de deux cents chevaliers et écuyers sous les ordres[16] d’Olivier de Clisson, de Hervé de Léon, de Geffroi de Malestroit, du vicomte de Rohan et du sire de la Roche Tesson. Après un assaut infructueux,
le roi d’Angleterre laisse une partie de ses gens devant Vannes, puis il va rejoindre avec le gros de ses forces les chevaliers anglais qui assiégent Rennes. Là, il apprend que Charles de Blois, sa femme et ses enfants se sont refugiés à Nantes, c’est pourquoi il se dirige aussitôt de ce côté; arrivé sous les murs de cette ville, il y offre la bataille à Charles de Blois, qui la refuse. Force lui est de se borner à investir Nantes[17] , et encore d’un côté seulement, car les Français ont réussi à garder leurs communications du côté de la ville qui regarde le Poitou, par où ils s’approvisionnent. De ce côté aussi, les assiégés reçoivent des renforts amenés par Louis d’Espagne, Charles Grimaldi et Ayton Doria, qui, avec leurs Espagnols, Génois, Bretons et Normands, écumeurs de mer, ont passé la saison à détrousser les marchands, aussi bien ceux du parti français que ceux du parti anglais. Édouard III laisse devant Nantes la moitié de ses forces, et avec l’autre moitié il va assiéger Dinan; ainsi, en une saison et à la fois, en personne ou par ses gens, il met le siége devant trois cités (Vannes, Rennes, Nantes) et une bonne ville (Dinan). A un terrible assaut qui se livre sous les murs de Vannes, Olivier de Clisson et Hervé de Léon[18] sont faits prisonniers du côté des Français, le baron de Stafford du côté des Anglais. Le roi d’Angleterre s’empare de Dinan et revient renforcer ceux de ses gens qui assiégent Vannes. Sur ces entrefaites, Louis d’Espagne, Charles Grimaldi et Ayton Doria surprennent la flotte anglaise, qui était à l’ancre dans un petit port près de Vannes et la maltraitent. Pour éviter le retour d’une surprise du même genre, Édouard III met ses navires à couvert, partie dans le havre de Brest, partie dans celui d’Hennebont. P. 20 à 29, 224 à 239.
Par l’ordre du roi de France son père, Jean, duc de Normandie, se met à la tête d’une armée de dix mille hommes d’armes et de trente mille gens de pied qui s’est rassemblée à Angers[19] et marche au secours de son cousin Charles de Blois. A l’approche des Français, les Anglais qui assiégeaient Nantes lèvent le siége de cette ville et vont rejoindre devant Vannes le roi d’Angleterre.—Pendant le séjour du duc de Normandie à Nantes, les Anglais livrent un assaut à la ville de Rennes, qui dure un jour entier; ils y perdent beaucoup de gens par suite de la vigoureuse résistance des assiégés qui ont à
leur tête leur évêque, le baron d’Ancenis, le sire du Pont, Jean de Malestroit, Yvain Charruel et Bertrand du Guesclin, alors jeune écuyer.—Le duc de Normandie quitte Nantes pour marcher avec son armée au secours de Vannes assiégée par les Anglais: il établit son camp en face des assiégeants; ce que voyant, Édouard III, qui a besoin de toutes ses forces pour résister à un ennemi quatre fois supérieur en nombre, fait lever le siége de Rennes[20] . Les cardinaux de Palestrina et de Clermont[21] sont chargés par le pape Clément VI[22] de s’entremettre de la paix entre les deux partis, que la disette de vivres et la rigueur de la saison obligent à accepter cette médiation[23] . Une trêve est conclue entre les deux rois de France et d’Angleterre, qui doit durer jusqu’à la Saint Michel prochaine, et de là en trois ans[24] . Le duc de Normandie retourne en France, et Édouard III en Angleterre. P. 29 à 35, 239 à 247.
CHAPITRE LIII.
1343. EXÉCUTION D’OLIVIER DE CLISSON SUIVIE DE CELLE D’UN CERTAIN NOMBRE DE CHEVALIERS BRETONS.—1344. EXÉCUTION DES SEIGNEURS NORMANDS COMPLICES DE GODEFROI DE HARCOURT —ÉDOUARD III FAIT DÉFIER LE ROI DE FRANCE[25] (§§ 202 à 204).
Olivier de Clisson, accusé de haute trahison, subit à Paris le dernier supplice[26]; environ dix chevaliers ou écuyers de Bretagne sont mis à mort quelque temps après l’exécution d’Olivier de Clisson, comme complices de ce dernier[27] . Enfin, plusieurs seigneurs de Normandie, accusés eux aussi de haute[28] trahison, Guillaume Bacon[29] , le sire de la Roche Tesson[30] , Richard de Percy[31] , ont plus tard le même sort que les chevaliers bretons. P. 29 à 36, 239 à 250.
Édouard III fait reconstruire le château de Windsor[32] , où l’on bâtit une chapelle de saint Georges, et fonde l’Ordre de la Jarretière[33] . Irrité de l’exécution d’Olivier de Clisson et des autres chevaliers bretons et normands, il met en liberté Hervé de Léon son prisonnier
et le charge d’aller de sa part défier le roi de France. P 36 à 41, 250 à 257.
CHAPITRE LIV.
1345. PREMIÈRE CAMPAGNE DU COMTE DE DERBY EN GUIENNE[34]. (§§ 205 à 223).
Édouard III rompt la trêve de Malestroit; il envoie le comte de Derby en Gascogne[35] , Thomas d’Agworth[36] en Bretagne contre les Français, le comte de Salisbury en Irlande contre les Irlandais. Parti de Southampton avec des forces considérables, le comte de Derby débarque à Bayonne, puis se rend à Bordeaux dont les habitants l’accueillent avec enthousiasme. Pendant ce temps, le comte de l’Isle, qui se tient à Bergerac à la tête des forces françaises, se dispose à disputer aux Anglais le passage de la [Dordogne].—Derby, en quittant Bordeaux[37] pour marcher contre Bergerac, s’arrête un jour et une nuit à une petite forteresse qu’on appelle Montcuq[38]; et le lendemain de cette halte, ses coureurs s’avancent jusqu’aux barrières de Bergerac, qui n’est qu’à une lieue de Montcuq. Le matin de ce même jour, Gautier de Mauny, dînant à la table du comte de Derby, propose de livrer immédiatement l’assaut pour boire à souper des vins des seigneurs de France. A la suite d’un premier assaut, les Anglais emportent le premier pont ainsi que les barrières et se rendent maîtres des faubourgs de Bergerac. Un second assaut dirigé contre les remparts reste infructueux. Ce que voyant, Derby fait venir de Bordeaux un certain nombre de navires avec lesquels il attaque Bergerac par eau; il réussit à rompre sur une grande étendue les palissades qui défendent la ville de ce côté. Le comte de l’Isle, voyant que la place n’est plus tenable, fait déloger la garnison et se sauve en toute hâte à la Réole. Les habitants de Bergerac s’empressent de se rendre au comte de Derby et lui font féauté et hommage au nom du roi d’Angleterre[39].—Derby, après s’être rafraîchi deux jours à Bergerac, quitte cette ville pour aller attaquer Périgueux; chemin faisant, il soumet Langon[40] dont la garnison se retire sur Monsac[41] , le Lac (les Lèches[42]), Maduran[43] , Lamonzie[44] , Pinac[45] , Lalinde[46] , Forsach (Laforce[47]), la Tour de Prudaire[48] ,
Beaumont[49] , Montagrier[50] , Lisle[51] , chef-lieu de la seigneurie du comte de ce nom, Bonneval[52] . Après des tentatives infructueuses contre Périgueux[53] et Pellegrue[54] , Derby s’empare du château d’Auberoche[55] dont les habitants se rendent sans coup férir[56] ainsi que de la ville de Libourne[57] et rentre à Bordeaux. P. 41 à 62, 237 à 282.
Le comte de l’Isle, informé du retour de Derby à Bordeaux, met le siége devant Auberoche et fait venir de Toulouse quatre machines de guerre pour abattre les remparts du château. Les assiégés d’Auberoche chargent un de leurs valets de porter à Derby une dépêche qui l’informe de la détresse où ils se trouvent. Ce valet est arrêté par les assiégeants qui, après avoir pris connaissance de la dépêche dont il est porteur, le placent dans la fronde d’une de leurs machines de guerre et le lancent avec son message pendu au cou[58] . A la nouvelle du danger que court la garnison d’Auberoche, Derby quitte en toute hâte Bordeaux[59] , rallie sur sa route les gens d’armes anglais, tant ceux qui se tiennent à Libourne sous Richard de Stafford que ceux qui occupent Bergerac sous le comte de Pembroke, et vient livrer bataille[60] aux Français à quelque distance d’Auberoche. Défaite des Français: les comtes de l’Isle[61] , de Valentinois[62] , de Périgord[63] et de Comminges[64] , les vicomtes de Villemur[65] et de Caraman[66] , les sénéchaux de Rouergue, du Querci[67] et de Toulouse[68] , les seigneurs de la Barde et de Taride[69] , les deux frères Philippe et Renaud de Dion sont faits prisonniers; Roger[70] , oncle du comte de Périgord, le sire de Duras, Aymar de Poitiers[71] , les vicomtes de Murendon[72] , de Bruniquel, de Tallard et de Lautrec[73] sont tués.—Mécontentement du comte de Pembroke qui n’arrive à Auberoche qu’après la bataille.—Derby laisse à Auberoche une garnison sous les ordres d’un chevalier gascon nommé Alexandre de Caumont et retourne à Bordeaux. P. 62 à 73, 292 à 295.
CHAPITRE LV.
1345 ET 1346. BRUITS CALOMNIEUX CONTRE ÉDOUARD III.—SECONDE[74] CAMPAGNE DU COMTE DE DERBY EN GUIENNE[75] (§§ 223 à 235).
«Vous[76] avez entendu parler ci-dessus de l’amour d’Edouard III pour la comtesse de Salisbury. Toutefois, les Chroniques de Jean le Bel parlent de cet amour plus avant et moins convenablement que je ne dois faire, car, s’il plaît à Dieu, il ne saurait entrer dans ma pensée d’inculper le roi d’Angleterre et la comtesse de Salisbury d’aucun vilain reproche. Si les honnêtes gens se demandent pourquoi je parle ici de cet amour, qu’ils sachent que messire Jean le Bel raconte dans ses Chroniques que le roi anglais viola la comtesse de Salisbury. Or, je déclare que je connais beaucoup l’Angleterre, où j’ai longtemps séjourné, à la Cour principalement, et chez les grands seigneurs de ce pays; et pourtant je n’ai jamais entendu parler de ce viol, quoique j’aie interrogé là-dessus des personnes qui l’auraient bien su, si jamais il en avait rien été. D’ailleurs, je ne pourrais croire et il n’est pas croyable qu’un si haut et vaillant homme que le roi d’Angleterre est et a été, se soit laissé aller à déshonorer une des plus nobles dames de son royaume et un de ses chevaliers qui l’a servi si loyalement et toute sa vie: aussi d’ores en avant je me tairai de cet amour et reviendrai au comte de Derby et aux seigneurs d’Angleterre qui se tenaient à Bordeaux.»
Vers la mi-mai[77] 1345, le comte de Derby quitte Bordeaux où il vient de passer ses quartiers d’hiver[78] , et, après avoir fait à Bergerac sa jonction avec le comte de Pembroke, il marche contre la Réole. Derby reçoit sur sa route la soumission des habitants de Sainte-Bazeille[79]; il s’empare de la Roche Meilhan[80] , et, après avoir mis pendant quinze jours le siége devant Monségur[81] , reçoit à composition le capitaine de cette forteresse, se fait rendre Aiguillon[82] , emporte d’assaut Castelsagrat[83] , après quoi il met le siége devant la Réole. P. 73 à 80, 293 à 300.
La garnison qui défend pour le roi de France la ville et le château de la Réole a pour capitaine un chevalier provençal nommé Agout des Baux. Après quelques assauts, les habitants de la ville font leur soumission[84] à Derby au nom du roi d’Angleterre, malgré tous les efforts d’Agout des Baux, qui se retire alors dans le château avec
ses compagnons. Les assiégeants font miner ce château.—Sur ces entrefaites, Gautier de Mauny est informé que son père est enterré à la Réole. Le Borgne de Mauny, père de Gautier, dans un tournoi qui s’était tenu à Cambrai, avait tué par mégarde un neveu de l’évêque[85] de cette ville, jeune chevalier de la famille de Mirepoix[86]; et un jour que le Borgne de Mauny, au retour d’un pélerinage à Saint-Jacques en Galice, était venu voir le comte de Valois qui assiégeait alors la Réole[87] , il avait trouvé la mort dans une embuscade et par une vengeance des parents du jeune chevalier tué à Cambrai.—Agout des Baux rend le château de la Réole au comte de Derby, moyennant que lui et ses compagnons, originaires de Provence, de Savoie et du Dauphiné, pourront aller où bon leur semblera et conserveront leurs armes[88] . P. 80 à 91, 300 à 309.
Prise de Monpezat[89] , de Castelmoron[90] et de Villefranche[91] en Agenais par Derby,—de Miramont[92] , de Tonneins[93] et de Damazan[94] par les gens d’armes de Derby. P. 91 à 94, 309 à 312.
Le comte de Derby met le siége devant Angoulême[95] dont les habitants prennent l’engagement de se rendre, s’ils ne sont pas secourus dans un mois.—Tentatives infructueuses des Anglais contre Blaye[96] , Mortagne[97] en Poitou, Mirabel[98] et Aulnay[99] . Reddition d’Angoulême et rentrée de Derby à Bordeaux. P 94 à 96, 312 à 313.
CHAPITRE LVI.
1344. BANNISSEMENT DE GODEFROI DE HARCOURT —1345. MORT DE JACQUES D’ARTEVELD ET DU COMTE DE HAINAUT —1346. JEAN DE HAINAUT EMBRASSE LE PARTI DE PHILIPPE DE VALOIS[100] (§§ 236 à 240).
Godefroi de Harcourt, frère du comte de Harcourt et sire de SaintSauveur-le-Vicomte en Normandie, s’attire la haine de Philippe de Valois qui le bannit du royaume[101] . Godefroi de Harcourt se réfugie d’abord en Brabant[102] auprès du duc Jean son cousin; plus tard il passe en Angleterre[103] où il fait hommage à Édouard III qui
l’accueille favorablement et lui assigne une pension. P 96 et 97, 313 et 315.
Alliance étroite d’Édouard III et de Jacques d’Arteveld qui entreprend de déshériter, non-seulement Louis, comte de Flandre, mais encore Louis de Male, le jeune fils du dit comte, et de faire ériger le comté de Flandre en duché au profit du prince de Galles[104] , fils aîné du roi d’Angleterre. Edouard III et son fils viennent à l’Écluse[105] avec une flotte nombreuse pour mettre à exécution ce projet. Les tisserands de Gand [excités sous main par Jean, duc de Brabant[106] , qui veut marier sa fille à Louis de Male], font alors de l’opposition à Jacques d’Arteveld qui périt un jour dans une émeute de la main d’un tisserand nommé Thomas Denis[107] . Édouard III est transporté de fureur en apprenant la fin tragique de Jacques d’Arteveld; il quitte l’Écluse et regagne son royaume[108] . Les bonnes villes de Flandre envoient alors des députés à Londres pour se disculper et calmer le ressentiment du roi anglais. Ces députés déclarent que le désir des Flamands est de marier le jeune Louis de Male, héritier présomptif de leur comté, à l’une des filles du roi d’Angleterre; celui-ci se tient pour satisfait et rend aux bonnes villes de Flandre son amitié[109] P 97 à 105, 315 à 321
Siége et prise d’Utrech par Guillaume, comte de Hainaut. Ce prince entreprend une expédition contre les Frisons; il est battu et tué à Staveren[110] . «A la suite de ce désastre, les Frisons ne furent plus inquiétés jusqu’en 1396.... En cette année, sur une marche qu’on dit le Vieux Cloître, Guillaume, comte d’Ostrevant, fils du duc Aubert, vengea grandement la mort de son grand oncle Guillaume de Hainaut; il alla plus avant en Frise que personne ne fût allé auparavant, ainsi qu’il vous sera raconté et déduit ci-après en l’histoire, si moi Froissart, auteur et compilateur de ces Chroniques, puis avoir le temps, l’espace et le loisir, et que je m’en puisse voir suffisamment informé[111].» Après la mort du comte de Hainaut, Jeanne sa veuve, fille aînée du duc Jean de Brabant, se retire dans la terre de Binche[112] qui forme son douaire; et Jean de Hainaut, qui vient de s’échapper à grand peine des mains des Frisons, gouverne le comté en attendant que Marguerite de Hainaut, sœur du comte
défunt et femme de l’empereur Louis de Bavière, prenne possession[113] de l’héritage de son frère. P. 105 à 107, 321 à 324.
En considération de son gendre le comte Louis de Blois, neveu du roi de France, et sur les instances des seigneurs de Fagneulles, de Barbenchon, de Senzeilles et de Ligny, Jean de Hainaut renvoie son hommage au roi d’Angleterre[114] et prête serment de fidélité à Philippe de Valois[115] . Le roi de France lui assigne une pension[116] pour le dédommager de la perte de celle qu’il touchait sur la cassette d’Édouard III. P. 107 et 108, 324 et 325.
CHAPITRE LVII.
1346. EXPÉDITION DE JEAN, DUC DE NORMANDIE, EN GUIENNE.—SIÉGE D’AIGUILLON[117] (§§ 241 à 253).
A la nouvelle des succès du comte de Derby en Guyenne, Philippe de Valois se prépare à la résistance; il met Jean son fils, duc de Normandie, à la tête des forces chargées d’opérer au-delà de la Loire contre les Anglais. Les plus grands seigneurs de France, notamment les ducs de Bourgogne et de Bourbon, se rendent à l’appel de Philippe de Valois. Jean, duc de Normandie, traverse l’Orléanais, le Berry, l’Auvergne et arrive vers la fête de Noël 1345 à Toulouse[118] , rendez-vous général des forces françaises dont l’effectif s’élève à six mille hommes d’armes et à quarante[119] mille gens d’armes à lances et à pavais «qu’on nomme aujourd’hui gros varlets[120].» Après la Noël, départ de Toulouse[121] , prise de Miramont[122] , de Villefranche[123] et siége [d’Agen[124]] par le duc de Normandie.—Le comte de Derby envoie à Aiguillon l’élite de ses chevaliers, Gautier de Mauny entre autres, fait mettre le château dans le meilleur état de défense et reprend Villefranche aux Français.—Pendant le siége [d’Agen] par les Français, le sénéchal de Beaucaire, le duc de Bourbon et une foule d’autres seigneurs partent un soir du camp et, après avoir chevauché toute la nuit, arrivent au lever du jour devant un lieu nommé Anthenis[125] , nouvellement rendu aux Anglais, dont ils s’emparent, grâce à une
