Our recent architecture season focused on “spaces of freedom” – those ordinary, public places inhabited every day by ordinary people – and how these spaces can become extraordinary when they’re used to express civil, political and intellectual rights.

But, when many public spaces are actually privately owned and fitted out with CCTV cameras to monitor our behaviour in them, are any areas in the built environment truly free? How would you define a “space of freedom”? We’ve identified four different public place typologies which people have used throughout history to fight for their rights. Check out these famous examples and decide which of them, if any, you think are really “free” spaces.

The public square has historically provided an ideal space for protest and demonstration – enclosed, often laden with iconic national or civic semiotics and purposely built for ceremonial use or large gatherings.

Almost a byword for freedom itself, the university may not constitute one particular place type, but is more a conceptual and psychological space in which young minds have pushed the boundaries of intellectual, civic and political freedoms, sometimes even in the face of violence.

California University Berkeley; Columbia University; Kent University

In the 1960s, students all over America were seized with revolutionary fervour and pacifist ideals, instigating protests against the Vietnam War and for the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movements. At UC Berkeley, student defiance against bans on campus-led political activity culminated in the 1965 Vietnam Day march, marking the first large scale protest against the Vietnam War. In 1968 Columbia University students staged furious protests when they discovered that the university administration was supporting US activity in Vietnam, and equally that they were planning on building a segregated gym on university land. At Kent State University in 1970, unarmed students were shot whilst protesting against the news of American military action in Cambodia. Four million students went on strike in retaliation, causing the closure of hundreds of universities and schools. A decade of student activism played a significant role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War and its subsequent finish.

Athens Polytechnic

In 1973 Greek students demonstrating against the dictatorial military junta occupied Athens Polytechnic, and sent a radio broadcast across the city calling for civilians to join them, who answered in their thousands. Several days later tanks arrived outside the university, and student pleas for permission to evacuate were disregarded. In the ensuing violence 24 people died and hundreds were injured. One year later the junta had been defeated and Greece democracy was restored.

South African universities

In October 2015, students at South Africa’s top universities, led by Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, faced riot police, tear gas and stun grenades to protest against rising tuition fees, in the largest numbers since the end of apartheid in 1994. Many feel that the increase will make university unaffordable for poor and middle-class black South Africans, echoing the discriminatory economic imbalance still felt by many to exist in South African society.

Another communal space, albeit with a much greater sense of physical freedom, the park was in the 20th century used as a site for positive change and non-violent protest.

Their very purpose being to convey movement, the network of pathways which runs through every city is a ready-made space for freedom marches and expansive demonstrations. They have played host to some of the most iconic freedom movements of modern times.

Pride March, New York City

Now held annually in countries worldwide and possibly the best-known rights march in history, the Pride movement was born in the streets of Manhattan in 1969. After the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular haunt in Greenwich Village for gay, lesbian and trans-gender people, riots and violent protests erupted in the surrounding neighbourhood. Within six months activist organisations were cohesive enough to arrange the first ever Gay Pride marches, which took place on 28 June, 1970, in New York, LA and San Francisco.

Notting Hill Carnival, London

Carnival may nowadays be best known as London’s biggest and best street party, but it is rooted in the 1950s struggle of West Indian immigrants, trying to carve out a space for their culture amongst rising racial violence in the Notting Hill area of West London. The first “Caribbean Carnival” was held in St Pancras Town Hall in reaction to the Notting Hill Race Riots in 1958, and by 1966 had burst out into the streets, filling them with celebrations of cultural unity and the sounds of Caribbean music which could be heard throughout the area. Riots during the 1970s – in which Caribbean youths were targeted and harassed by police – failed to quash the event, which nowadays offers free space to celebrate London’s multicultural diversity.

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was famously constructed to stop migration from the Communist Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, restricting not just literal freedom of movement, but also binding East Berliners to an intellectually and politically repressive regime. Since the toppling of Communism in 1989 the remaining parts of the Wall which thread throughout Berlin’s streets have served as a permanent physical reminder in of the hard-won, irrepressible victory of personal and political freedoms, expressed through the colourful street art that now covers the concrete.