Alignments of Architecture and Commoning in Tai O Village Architecture Critique and Fields of Adversity

Abstract

This chapter examines alignment between commoning and architecture’s disciplinary limits. The first section discusses Tai O Village, a settlement in Hong Kong where changing development patterns require contested negotiation. In Tai O’s context, the chapter asks how commoning relates to architecture’s disciplinary foundations. What consequences come of alignment between their conceptual fields? To investigate this, the second section genealogically analyzes the commons’ and commoning’s expansion in scope from Elinor Ostrom to later literature, defining the terms’ conceptual inclusions as prerequisite for alignment. The section thereafter reviews a prevalent structure in architecture critique: each text examined constructs politics and ethics for architecture, privileging certain agencies that direct resources via technology. We contend that this critical writing structure is foundational to architecture, through historical permutations vary. When authors of later texts include architectural processes as critique objects, previously partial alignments to commoning solidify. These distinctions in architecture’s assessment priorities have, we argue, significant consequences for architecture’s foundations. With this, critical architectural scholarship differentiates from contingent practice through a commoning framework. If we self-assess our architectural research in Tai O to make decisions, then the foundational structure above remains, including permissions for examining architectural processes as objects and privileging agency equity as a disciplinary concern. The ethics and politics of our casework prioritize the agencies they include, and the access technology they afford. This changes how we appraise architectural products: their ability to structure engagement and generate knowledge make them relevant to commoning, while architecture’s foundational critique structure acquires characterizing differences.