Life After Property

Life After Property

Exhibition Dates
November 27, 2023—February 9, 2024

The lines drawn on land to claim ownership and demarcate property have had widespread ramifications on forming divisions—between race, class, ecologies, and social groups, amongst others. In the United States, the commodification of land is now so deeply entrenched with economic and social policies that it often is used as a form of economic support in the wake of dwindling forms of social security. Not only does this amplify divisions between classes, but these policies reify in formal decisions that reaffirm this status quo.

Despite the pervasiveness of commodified private property models, these are relatively nascent when compared to the history of the city and how humans have lived. Life After Property examines how the territory, neighborhood, block, and home can be reclaimed for more collectivized ways of living and being.

The five projects presented consider techniques such as resistance, decommodification, commoning, re-graining, and framing, to offer more equitable ways of distributing resources—forming solidarity, community control, and forms of care to combat precarity.

Featured projects include “Commoning Domestic Space” (2020), “The Center Won’t Hold” (2021), “Lots Will Tear Us Apart” (2023), “Staking the Land” (2020), and “This Land is Your Land” (2022-23).

About the Team

Life After Property is designed and curated by The Open Workshop.

The Open Workshop is a design-research practice operating at the nexus of architecture and urbanism. Founded by Neeraj Bhatia in 2013, the firm has been awarded the Architecture League Prize, an Emerging Leaders Award (Design Intelligence), and the Canadian Prix de Rome. Their work has been commissioned by the Venice Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Seoul Biennale, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Bhatia is an associate professor at the California College of the Arts where he directs the urbanism research lab, The Urban Works Agency.

Exhibition Team
Neeraj Bhatia, Duy Nguyen, Caleb Bentley 

Curator
Sandhya Kochar 

Faculty Facilitator
John D. Davis

Fabrication and Installation 
Anthony Periandri 

Collaborators
Lots Will Tear Us Apart, a joint venture with Spiegel Aihara Workshop 

Works Commissioned by:

  • Venice Biennale of Architecture
  • Chicago Architecture Biennial
  • Spacewars (Kuwait Pavilion)
  • University of Tennessee-Knoxville 

Visit

The Banvard Gallery is open and exhibiting works. Hours for the gallery are 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Monday–Friday.

The Banvard Gallery is located on the first floor of  Knowlton Hall.