Collective space is not an object: Reflections inspired by lectures by Tatiana Bilbao and MMX Studio

By Susan Chombo 

Before joining Yacademy’s Architecture for Humanity program, I had already spent years thinking about collective space through the lens of informal settlements in Peru. Growing up and working there, I became familiar with neighborhoods that were not designed as complete urban plans, but gradually assembled through adaptation, negotiation, and shared effort. Houses expanded over time, circulation routes emerged through repeated use, and social life unfolded in spaces that were never formally designated as  “collective.” 

Project 1. The house we share. Ayni as an ancestral Andean principle based on mutual support. 

At the time, I did not necessarily have the theoretical language to describe these systems. I understood them through observation, lived experience, and practice. During the program, however, many of the lectures allowed me to revisit those earlier interests from a broader architectural perspective. What became increasingly clear to me was that some of the most meaningful collective spaces are not designed as isolated objects. They emerge between structures through proximity, ambiguity, and continuous occupation over time. 

This realization challenged a tendency I often observe in architecture: treating collective space as a predefined element inserted into a project. A plaza, a courtyard, a common room, or a circulation corridor is frequently assigned the role of “social infrastructure” simply by designation. Yet many of the environments I grew up studying and inhabiting did not function that way. Their collective spaces were rarely fixed or formally programmed. Instead, they evolved incrementally through repeated acts of use,  adaptation, and appropriation. 

Tatiana Bilbao’s reflections on domesticity resonated strongly with this idea. Her projects do not approach architecture as a finished prescription, but as a framework capable of supporting multiple forms of occupation and transformation. Her work repeatedly questions how architecture can create possibilities instead of prescribing behavior in advance. A table can expand and reorganize social interaction. A shelf can evolve with its users over time. A plaza can remain intentionally open-ended so people decide how to inhabit it themselves.

Project 1 The house we share. Cluster organization 

While listening to these lectures, I realized many of these concerns were already present in my previous projects, although in a more intuitive way. In my project, The house we share, developed around Lima’s barriadas and the Andean principle of Ayni, I explored how collective life could emerge through incremental housing systems rather than through singular centralized spaces. The project proposed adaptable housing units capable of expanding over time, while collective kitchens, thresholds, and circulation routes formed spatial relationships between dwellings. The collective was never conceived as a singular monumental center. Instead, it appeared gradually through the interaction between individual acts of construction and shared everyday life. 

Revisiting this work during the program allowed me to understand that what interested me was not simply housing itself, but the conditions through which people build forms of collective belonging. The lectures helped me recognize that collective space often depends less on formal definition and more on spatial negotiation. It is shaped by routines, proximity, rituals, adaptation, and repetition. 

This became even more evident in the lectures by MMX Studio. Their argument that communal spaces should remain ambiguous and flexible deeply resonated with my own observations of informal urban systems. They described how architecture sometimes needs to “be quiet,” allowing space for people rather than imposing identity through form. I found this particularly meaningful because many of the most vibrant social environments I have experienced were never rigidly programmed. Their openness allowed them to absorb changing uses and forms of occupation over time. 

In many informal settlements, circulation routes become social infrastructure. Stairs become gathering places. Platforms become extensions of domestic life. Thresholds become spaces for commerce, rest, and interaction. Architecture in these contexts is not experienced as a collection of isolated objects, but as a continuous negotiation between private and collective conditions.

This understanding also informed my later project Woven Ground, developed during the Yacademy program for internally displaced settlements in Somalia. The project explored how a lightweight pavilion could support gathering, learning, exchange, and collective care within conditions of displacement. However, rather than imagining the pavilion as a singular central monument, I became more interested in how collective infrastructure could be distributed throughout the cluster. 

Project 2 Woven ground. Cluster organization 

The project integrated two open collective nodes positioned strategically within the settlement to ensure accessibility across different housing groups. What mattered was not simply the object itself, but the relationships it could facilitate through everyday movement and occupation. The pavilion was conceived less as a fixed architectural statement and more as an adaptable spatial framework capable of evolving alongside the community using it. 

This approach was also influenced by conversations throughout the program around participation,  incompleteness, and adaptability. Several lecturers questioned the architectural obsession with finality and control, a perspective that aligned with the environments I had previously studied in Peru, where architecture often evolves incrementally through necessity, collective effort, and available resources. 

Throughout the program, I was able to understand how these ideas extend beyond informal settlements or humanitarian contexts. They reveal broader questions about architecture itself. Why do we often assume collective space must be clearly defined to function? Why are ambiguity and adaptability sometimes perceived as incomplete rather than intentional? At what point does architecture stop supporting collective life and start controlling it?

Project 2 Woven ground. A space for sharing, resting, and encountering. 

These questions became increasingly important while reflecting on humanitarian architecture. In emergency or displacement contexts, collective life continues to exist even when formal infrastructure disappears. People still cook, gather, exchange knowledge, rest, learn, and build routines together. Architecture cannot create these relationships artificially, but it can support the conditions that allow them to persist. 

This shifted my understanding of collective space from something formal toward something relational. The most meaningful social spaces are often not fully designed in advance. They emerge gradually through interaction, appropriation, and time. In that sense, architecture becomes less about creating fixed forms and more about establishing frameworks capable of supporting evolving forms of life. 

Looking back, I realize that many of my projects - from hillside settlements to collective housing systems in Peru and displacement infrastructures in Somalia - have been connected by the same underlying question: how can architecture support collective life without fully determining it? 

Rather than providing definitive answers, the program expanded the way I understood questions that had already been present throughout my work: how architecture supports adaptation, shared life, and forms of collective belonging over time. 

Perhaps collective space is not a room, a plaza, or a pavilion. 

Perhaps it is what emerges between them.