Edited by Markus Miessen

Agonistic Assemblies: On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality is an anthology that presents work on cultures of assembly. It stresses the relevance of small-scale and decentralised spatial formats of local knowledge production to community building and embedded political decision-making in the context of the socio-ecological transition. It reinforces the role of both individual and collective action while proposing distributed assembly and proximity as core attributes in the production of the contemporary and future city. It calls for a revised form of spatial politics. Miessen’s ongoing research trajectory Cultures of Assembly was initially kicked off during a Harvard GSD fellowship in collaboration with Joseph Grima, in which the two architects investigated the sociopolitical dimension of (urban) spatial design. Agonistic Assemblies asks: how can spaces—both physical and virtual—be envisaged to create publics? How is collectivity and society being generated spatially and in terms of policy? How do we “practice” society as a bodily, spatial form, and how does this practice contribute to spatial justice? Are there specific spatial settings that can intensify these practices? What kind of spatial design can we imagine as platforms for change?