UN/GROUND SPACES: ON THE FRAGILITY OF BELONGING AND URBAN SPACE.

An interdisciplinary anthology on the sociology and performance of contested space.


Publication 
Coming 25/26

Website 

This forthcoming publication explores the fractured geographies of urban life in a time of social polarization, legal exclusion, and rising authoritarianism. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from architecture, sociology, urban theory, and activism, (Un)ground Spaces examines how belonging is contested, how space is politicized, and how forms of resistance emerge through affect, absence, and collective imagination.

Through essays, conversations, visual contributions, and theoretical reflections, the publication asks: What holds us in cities increasingly shaped by fear, control, and fragmentation? How can we inhabit space critically—without certainty, but with intent? And what forms of solidarity are possible when the very grounds of community are unstable?

Initiated by Alesa Mustar (architect, spatial sociologist, and curator working at the intersection of urban marginality, spatial theory, and political urbanism),  Anna Sharifi (migration scholar and composer exploring legal stratification, political inclusion, and the psychological dimensions of exclusion), and  Silvia Gioberti (architect, artist, and co-founder of Guerilla Architects focusing on spatial justice, urban intervention, and collective agency), 

this book brings together voices across disciplines to articulate a shared urgency: to think, feel, and act against the architecture of exclusion—and toward new imaginaries of urban life.






MAIL