Open Collectives Station on Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia

May 22, 2021
After a one year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Open Collectives Station was launched at La Biennale di Venezia on May 22, 2021. Open Collectives is an immersive installation that features four digital and architectural platforms that leverage solidarity to strengthen economic sovereignty, housing affordability, communal self-determination, and mutual aid.



Created by the Civic Data Design Lab, the Open Collectives website features two interactive digital platforms: Collective Dimensions and Collective Voices. Collective Dimensions showcases collectives around the world, and Collective Voices asks visitors to express their ideas on sharing across four specific themes - Labor, Care, Living, and Market.



Collective Dimensions
Bringing together people with common goals and values, open collectives are voluntary and dynamic groups that range a variety of economic motivations, membership sizes, degrees of porosity to join, digital and physical platform presence, and governance structures. Visitors are encouraged to compare these qualities through five quantified characteristics: economics, size, porosity, platform, and governance. Additionally, Collective Dimensions provides an opportunity for visitors to add collectives they know about or participate in. Explore the archive or add a collective to Collective Dimensions at: opencollectives.mit.edu/dimensions.



Collective Voices
The 17th International Architecture Exhibition title asks “How will we live together?” The Open Collectives Station anchors the response “As Emerging Communities.” The Collective Voices digital platform expands upon this conversation and seeks to hear your perspective in response to pressing issues such as the future of work, the gig economy, the elder boom, and communal sharing. Add your opinion or explore what others think on the future of sharing via Collective Voices at: opencollectives.mit.edu/voices.

Initiated by Rafi Segal, director of the MIT Future Urban Collectives Lab, in collaboration with Sarah Williams, director of the Civic Data Design Lab, artist Marisa Moran Jahn, and futurist Greg Lindsay, the Open Collectives team was invited to Stations, a section at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition curated by Hashim Sarkis. The physical installation will be on display in the Arsenale Exhibition Spaces in Venice, Italy through November 21, 2021, while the Collective Dimensions digital platform will continue as an ongoing open-source archive for collective communities.

The Open Collectives website can be accessed through opencollectives.mit.edu.