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CONSENSUS URBANISM
Cities are never monolithic masses shaped solely by top-down planning.
They have always contained undercurrents of alternative urbanisms that escape or subvert overarching systems of control - urban fabric that is produced anarchically in a form of collective consensus.
How do these formal and informal platforms of public dialogue take root? What do these temporary communities’ bond over? How do consensus urbanists synchronize their actions?
The temporary city of Black Rock or Afrikaburn. The infrastructural organization of the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement. Informal Sunday gatherings of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong or the unregulated night markets in Addis Abada. These appropriations of spaces happen within existing frameworks, but without being dictated by them - rather a form of channeled anarchy, where individuals, united by shared intentions, have developed their own temporary structures and infrastructures. We propose the concept of consensus urbanism to understand the city as a series of interlockable elements, whose interaction produce emergent, unpredictable outcomes. More than a finished piece, the city becomes a Lego set that can be rebuilt, reinvented and destroyed by multiple actors - a continuous negotiation by the many, not the few.
FOUNDATION (2019)
COMMUNITY & VIDEO & INSTALLATION / 1 WOCHE, 48'03" / 2019 / BONN
In February 2019, six strangers - the FOUNDERS - entered the gallery space of Das Esszimmer in Bonn. Selected through an anonymous open call, they committed to spending one week living together inside the space, without leaving and without connecting to the outside world. Their shared aim: to lay the foundations for a new community, a new (so)ci(e)ty.
FOUNDATION was an experiment in collective becoming. With exposure to familiar social structures - cultural norms, authority, consumer habits, nationhood, family - intentionally minimized, the FOUNDERS explored what remains when the scaffolding of society is removed. Through this vacuum, they negotiated new roles, subverted daily routines, and created rituals born not of necessity, but of shared presence.The gallery became both site and shelter, laboratory and home. Affection was used as mortar, space was shaped by interaction, and social relations became the primary material. What emerged was not a blueprint, but a lived speculation: an attempt to imagine how we might inhabit the world differently, if we begin again - together.
This is what was left.
This is what was created.
This is what was founded.
SWARM (2017)
VIDEO & INSTALLATION / 3'11" / 2017 / SEOUL & BEIJING
SWARM is a speculative software company designed to fully replace the traditional master planning office. It proposes an alternative model of governance and urban planning - one that operates not through hierarchical authority, but through algorithmically mediated interactions between individuals.
At its core, SWARM introduces a technocratic medium of collective decision-making for shaping territory. It responds to the growing wave of citizen-led engagements with urban space, which increasingly challenge the authority of planners, architects, and civic institutions. From Chinese nail houses resisting demolition to participatory planning processes in Korea, new models of territorial agency are emerging - each reflecting specific cultural, social, and political contexts.
The project unfolds through an interactive light installation and video work, using the metaphor of a flock of birds to explore the dynamics of collective intelligence. This non-hierarchical, self-organizing behavior becomes a framework for reimagining how cities might be planned - not by a central authority, but by a dispersed and responsive system of feedback loops. SWARM envisions a future where urban planning is no longer a top-down process, but a distributed choreography - where algorithms mediate between needs, desires, and constraints, creating a new form of spatial consciousness attuned to complexity, fluidity, and consensus.
14TH DISTRICT (2016)
WORKSHOP & PUBLICATION / 82 PAGES / 2016 / SLAVUTYCH & ATHENS
In 1986, Reactor No. 4 of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, triggering one of the most traumatic events of the 20th century. In the aftermath, the Soviet Union called upon its republics to cooperate in building a new town - Slavutych - a place to rehouse the displaced workers and families of Chornobyl. Each republic contributed to the making of Slavutych: its master plan, architects, builders, and materials. The resulting districts each reflect the aesthetic and planning principles of different Soviet republics. Within just 18 months, the youngest city in Ukraine emerged, a collective architectural endeavor forged in response to catastrophe.
Today, Slavutych comprises 13 districts. Its future, however, remains uncertain. Up until 2017, a significant portion of its employment was related to the Chornobyl site, as the plant moves toward full decommissioning. This precarious dependency prompts a speculative question: what would a 14th district look like if it were built today?
Celebrating the Slavutych‘s unique urban history, we proposed Athens as its conceptual counterpart: both cities built around ruins, between post-nuclear and post-austerity, between built form and socio-political atmosphere. An open call invited local residents to imagine how Athens could be translated into the urban fabric of Slavutych. From this, five individuals were selected to form the Thinking Group - a collective tasked with conceptualizing and realizing the 14th District.
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