Please Join the Frances Loeb Library for a Faculty Colloquim 

Agonistic Assemblies (On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality)

Tuesday October 8 in the Frances Loeb Library Lobby, 4:30-5:45

Agonistic Assemblies (Sternberg Press/ MIT Press, 2024) is a call for a revised form of spatial politics. It stresses the relevance of small-scale and decentralized spatial formats of local knowledge production to community building and embedded political decision-making in the context of the socio-ecological transition. It reinforces the role of both individual and collective action while proposing distributed assembly and proximity as core attributes in the production of the contemporary and future city.
The book asks: how can spaces-both physical and virtual-be envisaged to create publics? How is collectivity and society being generated spatially and in terms of policy? How do we "practice" society as a bodily, spatial form, and how does this practice contribute to spatial justice? Are there specific spatial settings that can intensify these practices? What kind of spatial design can we imagine as platforms for change?
Markus Miessen is an architect and Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Luxembourg. His work revolves around questions of critical spatial practice, institution building, and spatial politics. Miessen has previously taught at the AA, has been a Harvard Fellow, and has held professorships at Städelschule, Frankfurt, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is the author of "The Nightmare of Participation" and
"Crossbenching".
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). She is also a CIFAR Fellow, and co-director of the "Humanity's Urban Future" project.