HOW TO BEGIN AGAIN: AN INITIATION TOWARDS UNITARY URBANISM

Miguel Robles-Durán (Cohabitation Strategies)

Zoom

CohStra’s Venice Architecture Biennale piece, How to Begin Again: An Initiation Towards Unitary Urbanism, is a response to the question curator Hashim Sarkis posed, “How will we live together” in the midst of global crises like climate change, wealth inequality, mass migrations, political polarization, and now pandemics? The current state of global, neoliberal urbanization exploits communities, cultures, and the environment. How to Begin Again is a 4-step initiation to a new awareness about alternatives for the future of urban design. It centers on the concept of unitary urbanism, which CohStra redefines as “an anti-capitalist and transdisciplinary practice that attempts to bridge popular and scientific knowledge to co-produce social and environmental justice in cities.”

In 2008, the urbanist Miguel Robles-Durán, together with his work partners Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, and Gabriela Rendón, founded Stichting Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra), an international nonprofit cooperative for socio-spatial research and development based in Rotterdam and New York City. CohStra focuses on conditions of urban decline, inequality, and segregation within the contemporary city. The group developed and designed over a dozen transdisciplinary urban projects in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, utilizing different methodologies to structure frameworks that catalyze grassroots-led transformations.