"Toward an Architectural Commons: Afro-Asians and the Labors of Development After Empire" combines historical research, geographical enquiry and visual analysis to trace the protean dimensions of anti-colonial struggle in post WWII Africa and Asia, showing how architectural and spatial ideas were an essential, if contested, infrastructure to build commons across national borders. Through different approaches to the problem of 'development,' it shows how Afro-Asian activists pursued anti-capitalist internationalisms, mobilizing writings on architecture, ideas of craft, and theories of space to tie their local struggles to the international. On the other, it argues that these emergent modes of solidarity were rivalled by the emergence of new Afro-Asian institutions, whose members collapsed the pursuit of self-reliance with the defense of state capital accumulation, concretized in several architectural and exhibitory projects. The project reveals how these visions of development—from activists who advocated for national liberation, and from institutions that sought national development—can be understood as two competing visions for building “Afro-Asian” collectivism and fraternity. By positioning these internationalist overtures as a modes of labor against imperial intervention, Dr. Shedde argue that renewed attention should be paid to "spatial practices" in historical research, highlighting the ways in which Afro-Asian activists contributed in novel, and previously overlooked, ways to theorizing liberation.