Luxembourg 2018

Title: “The architecture of a Common Ground”
Commissioner: Ministry of Culture
Curators/Exhibitors: LUCA Luxembourg Center for Architecture, Andrea Rumpf and University of Luxembourg, Master in Architecture, Florian Hertweck

“The Architecture of the Common Ground” highlights the importance of land and property for architecture and urban planning: privatisation as well as speculation, especially with urban land, has risen dramatically in the past decade. Many European towns and cities, which, like Luxembourg, are under enormous pressure to develop, have virtually run out of building land. The project  draws attention to this striking lack of public land with a spatial installation and literally confronts it with projects – tracked down in the architectural history of ideas, flanked by initial research results from the young University of Luxembourg – that make as much public space available as possible over and above the defined programmes. Freespace, the theme for this year’s Biennale Architettura, has been transformed into Freeland. The social and political dimension of architecture is linked to its creative power. “The Architecture of the Common Ground” puts forward a clear statement that does not mean to deliver universal answers but to show to what extent architects may conceptually react to the privatisation of land. In doing so, the curators defy the supposed logic based on which the almost universal privatisation of land is creating isolated enclaves, repressing the public sphere and allowing apartment and rental prices to explode. “The Architecture of the Common Ground” is an appeal to view the unreproducible and indispensable resource of land as a common good, like air and water. Only then will it be possible to move forward with the sustainable social and ecological development of our towns and cities.