Voice of Commons Unveiled
Giulia Foscari + Eva Franch i Gilabert
Date: 07 May 2025
Image Courtesy of UNA/UNLESS © Marco Valmarana, 2025
This inaugural conversation opens Voice of Commons by framing the urgency, structure, and ambitions of the transdisciplinary advocacy initiative launched as a Special Project of IntelliGens. While the climate crisis is both a human rights and global security emergency, our Global Commons — Antarctica, the Ocean, the Atmosphere, and Outer Space — remain voiceless in governance, excluded from decisions shaping our shared future. Challenging this silence, Voice of Commons creates a democratic space of dialogue at the intersection of art, science, policy, and technology. Eva Franch i Gilabert joins Giulia Foscari, curator of Voice of Commons, to explore the project’s multi-scalar planetary mobilisation — from high-level advocacy to grassroots participation.
Together they unpack its three core pillars: a podcast platform featuring global thought leaders; the Speak-Up for the Commons campaign, inviting citizens to lend their voices to the Commons; and a Petition, to be presented at COP30, calling for a Global Commons Assembly. They also reflect on the transformation of Carlo Scarpa’s 1952 Biennale ticket office into the Planetary Embassy — a space of democratic in-betweenness amplifying voices from Indigenous communities, nation-states, stateless nations, and the more-than-human world. From political imagination to spatial activism, this opening dialogue traces how Voice of Commons seeks to catalyze systemic change in defense of intergenerational justice for All-kind.
Together they unpack its three core pillars: a podcast platform featuring global thought leaders; the Speak-Up for the Commons campaign, inviting citizens to lend their voices to the Commons; and a Petition, to be presented at COP30, calling for a Global Commons Assembly. They also reflect on the transformation of Carlo Scarpa’s 1952 Biennale ticket office into the Planetary Embassy — a space of democratic in-betweenness amplifying voices from Indigenous communities, nation-states, stateless nations, and the more-than-human world. From political imagination to spatial activism, this opening dialogue traces how Voice of Commons seeks to catalyze systemic change in defense of intergenerational justice for All-kind.
Eva Franch i Gilabert is an internationally acclaimed architect, curator, educator, and researcher, widely known for her radical and visionary approach to architecture, cultural institutions, and public engagement. She is a professor at UMPRUM and co-founder of MODEL, Barcelona’s forward-thinking Architecture Festival. She previously served as Director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and as Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. Her diverse practice spans exhibitions, theoretical manifestos, and public lectures that challenge entrenched boundaries of design, governance, and spatial politics - articulating global ambitions through hyper-local narratives and speculative futures. Eva is a member of the Voice of Commons Advisory Council. She was born at 335 parts per million carbon dioxide in the Atmosphere.
Image Courtesy of UNA/UNLESS © Marco Valmarana, 2025