Confiscation and Revolution - The Civilian Architecture of the Kommunalka
A visual research paper on shared living in the Soviet Union, in collaboration with the doctoral thesis of the artist Elisheva Levy.
The project was proposed for the main pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
The Kommunalka was formed through the appropriation of aristocratic urban private dwellings, and the redistribution or reallocation of their spaces: civilians seized the house and quickly re-divided it by cutting it up into many small rooms. These hastily constructed rooms multiplied rapidly across the city of Petrograd, allowing the process to grow into a dominant revolutionary force. Through the Kommunalka, the structure of cities, houses, and apartments changed and with them building codes and housing laws. The spontaneous and once temporary arrangement of spatial occupation produced a form of collective life that continues to this day.