Collective Living as a Form of Life

How and where to locate our collective values is at the core of reconciling what it means to live in a pluralistic society. If we understand pluralism as the dialectic of individual distinction and collective equality, the public realm becomes the arena for political negotiation. How the individual and collective are mediated through architecture is most precisely unpacked in collective housing typologies, where a renegotiation between the public and private realm offers new social and spatial organizations. This lecture will unpacks how the individual and collective are organized through hardware, software, and orgware of a range of collective living case studies as a way of providing more agency to residents on shaping their own way of life.

Neeraj Bhatia is an architect, urban designer, and educator whose work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. He is the founder of the design practice, THE OPEN WORKSHOP, as well as an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where he also directs the urbanism research lab, the Urban Works Agency. Select distinctions include the Architectural League Young Architects Prize, Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, and the Canadian Prix de Rome. THE OPEN WORKSHOP’s design-research has been commissioned by the Seoul Biennale, Venice Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, amongst other venues.