Jah­res­pu­bli­ka­tion des Labo­ra­toire Bâle der EPFL

Manor Les­sons – Com­mons revi­si­ted

Her­aus­ge­ber:
Harry Gugger
Amy Per­kins
Sarah Barth
Augus­tin Clé­ment
Alex­an­dros Fota­kis

Klap­pen­text:

Our con­tem­porary con­di­tion, gover­ned by the abs­tract appa­ra­tus of the capi­ta­list market, demands a cri­ti­cal rea­ding of the dis­tri­bu­tion, ownership, and use of common resour­ces, espe­cially on an island that has expe­ri­en­ced a long his­tory of pri­va­tiza­t­ion stem­ming from enclo­sure.

Manor Les­sons, the third inves­ti­ga­tion into what laba has termed ​“envi­ron­men­tal objects,” looks at how the manor house can be used as a tes­ting ground to reas­sess Britain’s com­plex and ongo­ing rela­ti­ons­hip with the coun­try­side. As the most rural region of one of the more den­sely popu­la­ted coun­tries in Europe, the South West of Eng­land reflects all the absur­di­ties of a glo­ba­li­zed coun­try under pres­sure, not only to deve­lop its eco­nomy and infra­struc­ture, but simul­ta­neously to sup­port and pro­tect its envi­ron­ment. Highly pro­tec­ted land­scapes, both natu­ral and com­po­sed, serve as the back­drop to his­to­ric seats of politi­cal power, while sites of intense pro­duc­tion are neatly con­cea­led behind natu­ral veils. This publi­ca­tion asks what les­sons can be lear­ned from the multi-laye­red his­tory of the Man­o­rial System, whose for­got­ten feu­da­li­s­tic orig­ins were once rooted in the idea of the land not as pri­vate pro­perty but as common ground.

laba has been ope­ra­ting in Basel since Sep­tem­ber 2011 and is direc­ted by Pro­fes­sor Harry Gugger. Manor Les­sons is the twelfth and final volume in a series ent­it­led [Place] Les­sons: Teaching and Rese­arch in Archi­tec­ture that docu­ments laba’s aca­de­mic work.