Design Proposal: Cooperative Communal Infrastructure

Design Proposal: Cooperative Communal Infrastructure

Market architecture, as argued in Chapter 2, can be read as an architecture of control of trading activities, in which it represents an authoritative power enforced by the government through its hygiene protocols and standardisation. It ignores the form of community and life that happens during everyday activities. The thesis recognises the form of social solidarity networks as a form of power that could operate as a resistance to this authoritative form of control and propose an architecture that would support the activities and social interaction between different groups. These groups which are part of multiple cooperative organisation could be recognise as a subject that each project in different sites would tailor to the community. The project is not arguing that it could help in forming a sense of community as architecture are not capable to do so, but it tries to encourage social interaction through the idea of communal infrastructure. Eric Klinenberg argued in his book, Palaces for the People, that the social infrastructure is a spatial condition that create the possibility for the people to physically interact57 . This face-to-face relation could happen in a communal space in the neighbourhood like playground, park or school. Moreover, the interaction between community helps generate connection, mutual support and collaboration between different groups of people, far away from private individual life.

It is first important to clarify what is the power in control of spatial production of the market hall. In Henry Lefebvre’s book The Production of Space, he argued that the space is not static, but it contains a certain meaning which could be read, write and rewrite58. In reading of spatial formation of market hall, it can be read as a controller, or regulator over the traders and the transaction activities by the authority. Meanwhile, traders who occupy the space and farmers who supply the goods, the two main subjects of the space, are devoid of power to involve in this spatial production. The communal infrastructure which crafted by the users themselves is not merely talking about the ownership, but it should involve a protocol of sharing of spaces, management, and participation by the collectives to maintain the communal infrastructure59. Thus, the current typology of market is not capable to facilitate such social structure; this raises the question what is the typological and formal spatial condition that could accommodate and support the process of commonning. The site purposed is in Klong Jan Community in a public land as part of a national housing program by NHA consist of around 5,000 inhabitants. By selecting this site, it starts the possibility of collaboration between the government and the cooperative. The existing community in organize as a credit union, in which its member is committed to save money each month engage in a collective manner and be politically active. Although the cooperative is mainly initiated by the economic purposed, the present of current social interaction through public gathering, sports, and religious events could be seen in multiple area of the community. The sense of the

Fig. 38 57 Klinenberg, Eric, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life, (New York, Crown, 2018) .p.9 58 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1991) p.5 59 Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space: The City As Commons (Zed Books; 1st edition, 2016) p.32

Site Market Cooperative Office Public School Public Park Healthcare Center Childcare Public Housing

Sport Facilities Library

200m

Klong Jan Community Fig. 38 Site Analysis at Klong Jan Community Showing the existing Social Infrastructure in the Area

Fig. 39 Isometric of the entire Klong Jan Community neighbourhood, showing space of activities (blue), connection (Orange)

community has already established, however, is not well endorse by spatial framework. In this site the proposed scheme used the strategy of courtyard that organize programs and activities between various groups. It is not selected as a result or an ultimate answer to the question of market hall typology that support communal life, but as a testing ground for the project to raise a discussion. As the project challenge the notion of market architecture as a mere controlling device of trading within the food logistics, its post the question: how could the market hall could potentially be reorganized and root itself to the both inside and surrounding community to facilitate a communal form of life? In this sense the site selection is strategic to this question. When Ildefons Cerda proposed a masterplan for a new developed city of Barcelona in mid-nineteenth century, the archetypal masterplan in modern era. He used the term ‘urbanization’ to describe a new paradigmatic change in urban design that use science to determine the logic of city expansion that orient around a new value: city efficiency and living prosperity that involve improve of social, education and sanitary amenities60. In which these social infrastructures were embedded into the urban expansion in the Eixample, including a hospital, school and market, while all people in city could access to the amenities in their neighborhood within 30 minutes by walking. This is a very simple idea, but could achieve a great success; 39 municipal markets still operating (after degraded for centuries and surpass a renovation) and became the main tourist attraction which, on the one hand spur gentrification around the area, but on the other deeply route within the everyday food shopping of Barcelona dwellers and keeping the small business alive in the urban. In the Klong Jan Community the site was select based on the proximity to the residents who can either walk or using small vehicle like bicycle, or motorcycle to access the market. Proximity is the key to the factor of success of the market that it is convenient enough for the buyers to come in their everyday routine61 .

Fig. 40 60 Pallares-Barbera, Montserrat, Badia, Anna, Duch, Jordi, Cerdà and Barcelona: The need for a new city and service provision, Urbani Izziv, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2011) p.131 61 Fuertes, P.; Gomez, E. La forma urbana del menjar fresc. “Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme (Ed. trilingüe)”, 2018, About Buildings & Food, núm. 271, p. 100

Fig.40 Plan of the Eixample development in Barcelona (1859), by Ildefons Cerdà. Illustration: Archives of the Kingdom of Aragon, Barcelona/Ministerio de Cultura/Ministerio de Cultura Source : <https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2016/ apr/01/story-cities-13eixample-barcelona-ildefonscerda-planner-urbanisation>

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