Anette Baldauf Libros

The 18th volume in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna series, Spaces of Commoning raises unsettling questions about research ethos, accountability, and the entanglement of power and knowledge embedded in Western sciences, arts and architecture. The well-designed, illustrated softcover book gathers over 20 case studies by an international collective of artists, architects and social theorists to investigate the question of commoning practices in Austria, Ethiopia, Greece and across the world. Organized into six sectionsNo Beginnings, Call to Order, Wage Labor and Reproductive Labor, Noise as Border, Bodies and Other Ghosts and Commoning as Horizon the essays explore how social movements are often caught between competing agendas and the gap between agendas and everyday life. It is the sites of these struggles that constitute the Spaces of Commoning. With contributions by artists Moira Hill and CASCO Office, scholar Lisa Lowe, spatial and urban theorists Stavros Stavrides and Stefan Grub, sociologist and art historian Pelin Tan, and architect Julia Wieger, among others.

In German and English. Photographs and art with text.

Victor Gruen, a pivotal figure in 20th-century architecture, is recognized as the father of the U.S. shopping mall. In spring 1979, shortly before his death, he began reconstructing his life story, which is now available in English for the first time. The narrative opens in Vienna in 1938, marking the turning point in Gruen’s life as he narrowly escaped the Nazi regime. A few years later, as a Jewish refugee in postwar America, he sought to recreate the vibrancy of Vienna’s city center, ultimately inventing the shopping mall. His Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota, became the first fully enclosed shopping center in the U.S. Gruen then adapted this concept for economically neglected urban areas, advocating for pedestrian zones and striving for an uncompromising urban ideal. The account captures Gruen’s humor and reflects on the complex forces shaping the postwar transformation of American cities. It places his experiences in a broader social and political context, revealing his complicated role in American architectural culture. The book concludes with afterwords by his children and an insightful essay by Anette Baldauf on Gruen's enduring legacy.