Architecture of Mutual Aid: Unauthorized Infrastructures for the Cogswell District

Abstract

This thesis situates architecture as a tactical and relational practice operating within Halifax’s contemporary redevelopment landscape. Focusing on the Cogswell District, the project examines how state-led redevelopment and infrastructural withdrawal have produced spatial conditions in which access to food, hygiene, energy, and shelter has become uneven, conditional, or absent. Drawing on theories of dispossession, human needs, infrastructure as governance, and insurgent spatial practice, the thesis reframes mutual aid as a form of infrastructure rather than an informal supplement to state provision. Through a network of small-scale, reversible architectural interventions, the project introduces counter-logistical, parasitic infrastructures that leverage existing urban systems to redirect surplus resources and spaces toward collective care. These interventions operate within legal and spatial grey zones created by redevelopment, prioritizing adaptability and collective authorship over formal authorization. The project positions architecture as an embedded practice that supports collective survival by reinhabiting spaces where care has been systematically displaced.