Serie STRATEGY - STRATEGY AND TACTICS IN PUBLIC SPACE - a+t architecture publishers Online store

STRATEGY AND TACTICS IN PUBLIC SPACE

a+t 38.
ISSN 1132-6409
ISBN 978-84-615-6137-7
2011
Bilingual: English/Español 176 Pages

In this issue in the Strategy series, a+t extends its field of research to the system of tactics. While the first two issues in the series involved approaching the project through the strategies identified in it, Strategy and Tactics in Public Space aims to define the strategy in relation to the tactics.

Javier Mozas looks at the context from which it emerges and develops the system of tactics applied to public space offering his view of the actors involved, the modus operandi and the realms in which it takes place.

Based on this view, a+t has chosen 8 tactical actions which it considers to be action types: re-using what is useless, low-cost self-building, farming the city, playing to change reality, negotiating at all levels, acting generously, using direct action and aspiring to utopia.

So, issue number 38 of a+t magazine brings to a close the field of research on project strategies by analysing 8 works on public space which add to the 34 works already published in the Strategy series. Likewise, it kicks off the analysis of the system of tactics with the works of 8 collectives.

articles

Public space as a battlefield

JAVIER MOZAS

Extract from the article by Javier Mozas published in this issue:

Public space was for Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975, a place for Action. Arendt believed that democracy needed to be exercised in the public realm, that it was useless to enact it in the private space of the household.

Action has two very different resources: one peaceful, the other violent. One using Words and the other Battle; that is, Discourse and War. The Indignez-vous movement is a protest movement whose core activity is a never-ending conversation. The tent camps, rallies, demonstrations, get-togethers, and sit-ins of the recent citizen movements in European cities have found a voice and a way of acting which are finding their place in the public spaces in democratic countries. These methods are based on language. The movements to occupy streets and squares which were inspired by the 15M Movement and which are fully aware of the influence they gain from the social visibility of their protests, are a type of peaceful struggle which, from public space, advocates greater political control over the absolute power of the financial markets. However, the uprisings in North Africa moved on from being mere protests to direct action, even the instigation of wars, as a means to an end confronted with the inefficiency of words...

projects