After thirteen years of long-term experimental work on sixteen complex urban projects in Europe, North America and South America spanning numerous topics such as housing, cultural production, territorial development, economics, policy and community advocacy, Cohabitation Strategies responded to Hashim Sarkis’ question by presenting its manifesto for the future of urban practice, titled How to Begin Again.
The constant exploitation of urban communities and the planet enables the current state of urbanization. It is capitalism’s tendency to pursue what Marx called “the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces” via the contemporary processes of urbanization and its devastating consequences to communities, cultures, and the environment. Yet there are forces that contrast this tendency and are building daily an alternative that has an impact at a local scale.
Expanding on Situationist International terminology, How to Begin Again, was conceived as a 4-step spatial initiation towards Unitary Urbanism, a term that CohStra redefined as: An anti-capitalist and transdisciplinary practice that attempts to bridge popular and scientific knowledge to co-produce social and environmental justice in cities.
CohStra’s installation was exhibited during the 17th International Architecture Exhibition titled How will we live together? in the section Emerging Communities, curated by Hashim Sarkis and organized by La Biennale di Venezia.