Alex Axinte is an architect, researcher and educator who lives and works in Bucharest. Alex graduated from the UAUIM University of Architecture in Bucharest in 2004, has a Master of Social Science at the Sheffield Methods Institute in 2018 and a PhD at the Sheffield School of Architecture, University of Sheffield in 2024. He is interested in documenting and supporting informal based practices of commoning in the context of collective housing in the post-socialist city. Alex is involved in action research projects, applied education, participatory design and cultural and civic activation and is co-founder of the spatial practice studioBASAR (2006). In the context of his PhD fieldwork research, he initiated OPEN Garage in Drumul Taberei neighborhood, a space-project for research, mutual learning and cultural and community activation. From this approach, the qualitative research The Map of Neighborhood Libraries was developed. Alex is a guest collaborator at the Faculty of Sociology at SNSPA, the Faculty of Landscape Design at USAMV, the University of Architecture and Urbanism UAUIM in Bucharest and was an general training asistant at the Master of Urban Design (MAUD), University of Sheffield.

Through an abrupt urbanisation achieved during the period of state socialism, Romanian cities and dwelling culture have been radically transformed. Starting with the 1960s, through the socialist-modernist public housing program large estates were constructed. Benefiting from resources, prefabrication and standardization, the initial planning was a generous proposition for the residents. Dwelling entailed proximity access to large green spaces and public infrastructure. However, planning was partially diverted by an economic model focused more on producing housing units at the expense of infrastructure and public space amenities. In these gaps dwellers intervened, informally adopting and collectively transforming the abandoned areas into common spaces, articulating a specific practice of living together. After 1989, thriving neoliberal policies, radical privatisation, collapsing public infrastructure and rampant individualization, further affected these districts. Nevertheless, the carefully disobedient but highly creative informal practices adapted and thrived, sustaining pockets of social infrastructure in between the blocks (like gardens, garages, kiosks or animal shelters). While community spaces disappear, opened at the ground floor of a block from Drumul Taberei district, in a former garage, turned into an herbal store, handmade shop and tailoring, OPEN Garage aims to be a laboratory for research and activation. Learning from residents adapting their garages into commercial, small services, meeting, workshops or relaxation spaces, OPEN Garage is an "extra room" for the community. This is where locals, action researchers, artists, educators or students intersect. In the beginning, we opened a Garage Library, followed by a series of educational workshops. In parallel, we started to map the informal practices from the area, also through the Garage School applied education project. Along the way, we set up a Garage Exhibition with the research results and even began to expand the educational activities into the nearby public spaces. In the context of devaluing informal practices by the dominant “civilization” discourse, the contribution of this practice-based research is an attempt to notice them as such, recognising their potential for supporting urban commoning. Moreover, the garage space went beyond a research method or an activation tool, and enacts a relational device as a proposition for a community equipment, situated in the local context.