Of
the
thesis
entitled: Spaces
of
Production:
From
the
Industrial
to the
Virtual
City
Abstract:
In the
industrial
city,
capitalist
ownership
over
the
means
of
production:
land, buildings,
tools,
technology
and
knowledge,
enabled
the
centralization,
control and
exploitation
of
the
working
class.
Monetary
exchange,
property
relations, and
the
dominance
of
production for
the
sole
purpose
of
capital
accumulation developed
alienating
social
relations
in
the
life
of
the
city.
In
the
post-industrial city,
the
liberation
of
information
through
digital
networks
has
democratized the
intellectual
means
of
production
creating
dramatic
shifts
in labour, exchange,
and
social
relations.
These
shifts
have
the
potential
to
create
the conditions
for
an
even
greater
gap
of
inequality,
a
return
to
an
economy dominated
by
inherited
wealth[1], and
where
capitalism
seeks
to
capture
economic
value
in
all
aspects
of
work, life and
the
city.[2] The
thesis
seeks
to explore
how
design
and
architectural
practice
can
be
used
as
a
means
to collectively
organize
and
mobilize
the
emerging
precariat
class
to reappropriate
fixed
capital
and
transform
labour
power
into
a
cooperative
space of
production.
The
thesis
focuses
on
the city
of
Kitchener,
drawing
from
its
history
as
a
city
built
by
artisans
and
the recent
re-emergence
of
a
new
creative
working
class
that
has
propelled
the maker
movement.
Using
the
city
as
a
place
for
prototyping
community
and
space, new spaces
of
production
are
emerging
through
grassroots
communities
to
test the
material,
social
and
financial
platforms
of
a
post-capitalist
system. Interviews
with
makers,
artists,
and
creative
entrepreneurs
will
explore
the emerging
spatial
models
in
the
productive economy.
The
thesis
will
use strategies
of
the
maker-movement,
the
process
of
learning
through
doing,
and lean
thinking
to
prototype
spatial
programming,
the
organization
of
the collective
and
the
feasibility
of
operating
a
productive
workspace.
Through
the documentation
of
the
process,
the
thesis
seeks
to
develop
a
process
guide
for the
precariat
worker
to
collectively
organize
a
community
lab
workspace,
own the
means
of
production,
and
develop
a
networked
production
infrastructure
in the
city.
[1] Thomas
Piketty, Capital in
the
Twenty-First
Century,
trans.
Arthur
Goldhammer
(Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University
Press,
2014).
[2] Maurizio
Lazzarato.
“Immaterial Labour.”
In Radical
Thought
in
Italy:
A Potential
Politics,
edited
by
Paolo
Virno,
by
Michael
Hardt.
(Minneapolis, MN:
University
of
Minnesota
Press,
1996),
133.;
Jeremy
Rifkin, The
Age
of
Access:
The
New Culture
of Hypercapitalism,
Where
All
of
Life
Is
a
Paid-for
Experience, New
York:
J.P. Tarcher/Putnam,
2000,
100.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
Rick Haldenby, University of Waterloo
Committee Members:
Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo
David Correa, University of Waterloo
External Reader:
Emily Robson, City of Kitchener
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Thursday
May
11,
2017
3:00
PM
Main
Lecture
Theatre
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.