The Manifesto

We need an architecture for occupation.

In a world where private property is mostly held by the banks, and where public property has 10pm curfews and no loitering laws, you either have to own land or pay the landowners to have to right to exist. But by seizing space and camping out, OWS has declared that everyone ought to have the right to a place to be. The public forums and tent cities that have sprung up around the movement have engaged the notion of public space more radically than the most avant-garde architects of the last century.

Occupiers are moving into space and inhabiting it for an indefinite length of time, and need a better architecture to support that. Like any other habitat, it needs to provide Comfortable Shelter for living and working. It needs to be Portable, so it can be deployed and redeployed with ease as the situation demands. It needs to be Affordable, so that those with limited means can participate, and so little is lost when police tear it down. It should Self-organize rhizomatically, requiring little to no central planning to implement. And it should be Beautiful, because everything we do should be beautiful.

Why would Architecture be of any importance to the occupy movement? Well, aside from increased comfort for the occupiers, the environment of an occupy camp is public relations. If the camps are an eyesore, then more people will support attempts to remove them. If the camps are comfortable, beautiful spaces, more people will support them, and more people will come down. Also, the act of building it ourselves is empowering. Everyone who participates will be able to point to something tangible and say “I helped build that.” After all, aren't we here to help build a better world? Here's a hammer, lets get started.

The built environment we live in, like the government we live under, was funded by and designed to benefit the 1%. We need to demonstrate that we, the users of that space, are better caretakers than the so-called “owners.” The space needs to be improved by our presence. In most US cities, there is little functional public space. We have vast empty plazas, urban sprawl, and no community. Occupy camps can take those empty spaces and create community centers, shared space with purpose and meaning. When we do that, we're proving that we can make society better. It's time to take back our habitat.