OCCUPY
This essay was written during the winter of 2011 after various visits to the Tent City University in London and Acampada Sol in Madrid. The amount of people I met there along with their stories, the way they organised themselves and their passionate debate was a real eye opener on our relationship with public space. I analysed these observations and compared them to the role of architects in previous protests such as the Movement of 1968.
The tents in Madrid and London have now gone but with the rise of a new spring, new protests have budded around the world. None of them so far have gone to the rebuilding of their tent cities. I could go on about the importance of experiencing physical space in the transformation of thought however I believe repeating history might not be the best of solutions in current protests. It is now time for the architects to take on the lessons learned from the occupy and create their own horizontal systems and public spaces.
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