Coenobium, Siedlung, Allotment: Three Experiments in Dwelling and Gardening, Solitude and Togetherness

Olivia Marra argues spatial archetypes of the Coenobium, Siedlung, and Allotment as three experiments in co-living for reconciling dwelling with gardening and togetherness with solitude. Her lecture will analyse these examples from the vantage point of gardening to expose their ambivalent characters. Despite having defined controversial and biopolitical projects of colonisation, domestication, and urbanisation, the Coenobium, Siedlung, and Allotment have also formalised gardening as a ritual of individual self-care and, also, collective imagination. In this sense, gardening should be reconsidered not as a hobby but as a mode of building and thinking, thus a praxis.

Olivia Neves Marra is an architect, researcher and educator based in London currently teaching at the Architectural Association (AA), University College London - Bartlett School of Architecture, and University of the Arts London - Central Saint Martins. Her work focuses on the relationship between ideological enclosures, ownership, and urban form. Olivia holds a PhD degree from the AA, a MArch from The Berlage Institute, and a DipArch from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She has also taught at The University of Edinburgh ESALA and Leeds School of Arts and lectured at several institutions, including Yale, Royal College of Art, Syracuse University London, and Oxford Brookes.

The AA-Yonsei Lecture Series The Ambivalence of Design is organised by James Kwang-Ho Chung & Brendon Carlin (Unit Masters, AA Diploma 19), Jooeun Sung (Professor, Yonsei University) and Jae-Won Yi (Adjunct Professor, Yonsei University).

This event is funded by the British Council grant (British Council UK-Korea Virtual Academic Collaboration grant).

Image: Vegetable garden for Ernst May. Nidda, Germany, c.1920