Spatial Commoning: Re-imagining Wellington's Central City Library & Civic Square

<p><b>What if architecture could promulgate its resistance to urban inclinations of segregation, privatisation, and individualisation?</b></p> <p>The neoliberal climate of contemporary cities has reduced architecture to a mere tool for capital accumulation. Architecture, consumed and produced as a form of capital, is facilitating the progression of inequality and environmental degradation, nullifying its humanitarian agenda.</p> <p>In counter-reaction to the capitalistic conditions of the city, and the conviction that architecture can express social cognition, this thesis re-imagines, two essential community containers – Wellington Central Library and Civic Square as an urban common.</p> <p>The primary intent of this thesis is to develop a speculative commons framework that architectonically articulates sharing and commoning practices in the context of Wellington City centre.</p> <p>This research argues the pertinence of commoning theories in contemporary urban cities. It examines the genealogy and characteristics of the urban commons and how it could be spatially constructed.</p> <p>It examines the historical significance of the existing building to inform the tectonic characteristics of the urban commons. It investigates the conceptual and formal devices of Post-Modernism to drive the spatial and representational aspects of the design process.</p> <p>Moreover, it explores the evolving function and the societal role of libraries within the era of digitisation. It identifies an adaptable programmatic framework for the 21st-century library envisioned as a common.</p>