a+t architecture publishers

We, as citizens, have a common territory that in fact pertains less and less to us as time goes by. The cities in which we live, the stages of our daily efforts, the world of our routine and our maps of obligations and pleasures, are getting broken up into limited domains. It is a conflict that has existed for years, a conflict that involves the public sphere being sucked into the private spiral at the rate of land revaluation.

The successive industrial crises, which shook up the developed world beginning in the 1970s, hid an unexpected reward for cities. This reward consisted of huge quantities of freed up emptied territories of opportunity in the centre of the old metropolis, vacant lots in clogged urban centres. The contrast between this unexpected source of usable urban soil and the increasing lack of space has become a temptation that many cities must face, ensuing into more or les fortunate results for what is public. On one side the private interests of global corporations, somewhat unfounded collective fears and acquired privileges bid. On the other side, the rights of citizens, in fairly bad shape, resist. Public domain, a physical and social state where people are equal, is at stake.

Two years ago, when we decided to begin the series on collective spaces, we called it In Common because we believed, and still believe, that public space is a territory that is portrayed because we share it on terms of freedom and equality.


THE PUBLIC CHANCE. New urban landscapes offers a renewed vision of some of those projects, now finished, and incorporates new interventions, all of them under visual analysis, characteristic of a+t’s publications.

Title: THE PUBLIC CHANCE
Subtitle: New Urban Landscapes
Series: In common
Authors: Aurora Fernández Per, Javier Arpa
Pages: 420
Size: 23,5 x 32 (Hardcover)
Colour Illustrations
Full English/Spanish edition
ISBN 978-84-612-4488-1