September 2022
The 10 sqm Co-op

© Logo by Numa Merino

The 10 sqm Co-op is a project developed by César Reyes Nájera and Céline Zimmer with the support of the Master in Architecture that will be exhibit at the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2022.

The 10 sqm Co-op is an audacious pedagogical experiment; We will found a cooperative during the Triennale, which will reclaim – as a first action – by leasing a parking lot in Oslo. The project aims to raise discussions about the transformative potential of cooperatives to challenge the dynamics of real estate market, to decommodify housing and to empower citizen bottom-up initiatives to manage public space in their cities. It is a citizen tool to experience together the complexity of financing and deciding in a community.

The 10 sqm Co-op attempts to raise enough money to lease a parking space in Oslo, which will be the first 10 square meters land managed by the cooperative. This parking space should be a place for everything except cars: Discussions and meetings of the cooperatives, realising first ideas of the cooperative in a small scale, unsealing the parking space and use it as a small garden, dinner parties. Our call to action intends to reinforce the idea that private cars should not idly occupy public space. It also tests the possibility of empowering neighbours in reclaiming the right to manage the public space of the city and a testbed to start a housing cooperative.

The project outlines the possibility of redistributive and granular urbanism made by neighbours. A cooperative is a small neighbourhood, that can have a great impact on the surrounding neighbourhood in a larger scale. The cooperative parking space should work as a microneighbourhood, where to test new forms of organisation and digital governance. Ten square meters to reclaim public space, to test citizen governance models to liberate housing from its commodified character and recover the right to the neighbourhood, from a cooperative founded at the Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Team: César Reyes Nájera, Céline Zimmer, Master in Architecture University of Luxembourg, Numa Merino Studio, Daniel Lacasta Fitzsimmons