AHRA Events 2008:
5th
Annual AHRA Research Student Symposium:
Leicester School of Architecture
De Montfort University
3 December 2008
Call for Papers
Programme
and abstracts
AGENCY
5th
AHRA International Conference
University of Sheffield
Friday 14th and Saturday 15th November 2008
For a full conference statement, call for papers,
and other information, please visit the conference website:
http://www.agency-conference.info/
CONFERENCE
FLYER - pdf
For queries, please email:
ahra08@sheffield.ac.uk
AGENCY, the 5th International Conference of the
Architectural Humanities Research Association, asks for a more
active relationship between the humanities, the architectural
profession, and society. The conference will attempt to energise
these relationships by addressing issues of agency, and will specifically
address the role of architectural humanities research as an agency
of transformation.
While the potential of agency is most frequently taken to be the
power and freedom to act for oneself, for the architectural and
architectural research community this also involves the power
and responsibility to act as intermediaries on behalf of others.
There are a number of factors that affect how well this potential
can be realised.
AGENCY accepts that the conditions for effective action are both
contingent on individual circumstances and constantly changing.
Nevertheless, the conference sets out to explore how humanities
research can better contribute towards understanding current architectural
needs, possibilities and
capacities for action. It will explore what is meant by ‘action’
in this context, what kinds of activities and conditions are relevant,
what prevents the effective exercise of agency, and how the consideration
of such prevention might indicate effective points of, and tactics
for, alternative action.
Research in the architectural humanities has tended to be too
inward looking, avoiding these kinds of questions and leaving
important aspects of architecture’s role dramatically under-theorised.
AGENCY will investigate active and outward looking approaches
to humanities research, attempting to connect to a number of key
political and social issues. The conference thus moves away from
a concentration on the immediate objects and processes of architectural
production towards an investigation of their wider context and
possibilities.
It is proposed to focus the conference on two key areas where
questions concerning the relationships between architecture and
agency are particularly significant: the particular possibilities
of ARCHITECTURAL PRAXIS, and the big social and political questions
of our age concerning the SURVIVAL OF THE ENVIRONMENT. In each
case the intention is that such questions will be addressed through
humanities research approaches, allowing our field of research
to invigorate these neglected areas.
http://www.agency-conference.info/
Other Events:
One-Day Courses:
Greening
Architecture
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
An overview of sustainable
design, philosophies and concepts, including the code for sustainable
homes.
Aimed at architects, designers
and householders with an interest in reducing the environmental
impact of buildings, this workshop will cover principles for both
new-build developments and refurbishment projects in the domestic
and commercial sectors.
Call to book on 01243 811464
Head of Learning, Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton,
Chichester, PO18 0EU
Email: courses@wealddown.co.uk
Link to: Weald
and Downland Museum
Third International Conference
INSTANT
CITIES: Emergent Trends in Architecture and Urbanism in the Arab
World
American University of Sharjah, UAE
1-3 April, 2008
Organized by The Center for the Study of Architecture in the Arab
Region (CSAAR). In collaboration with School of Architecture and
Design, American University of Sharjah
Throughout the Arab region, rapid urbanization fueled by speculation
and geopolitical transformations have had a significant impact
on architecture. The flow of people, goods and capital into the
Gulf states has prompted fundamental changes resulting from economic
growth and diversification intended to lessen the dependence on
oil revenues. As a result of its ability to entice investors and
instantly translate funds into real estate ventures, Dubai has
become a prime example and a potential focus of study. Architects
and planners struggle to adapt to processes of rapid change and
there seems to be little time for reflection on the long-term
socio-cultural or environmental consequences of current practices.
The CSAAR 2008 conference will focus on the causes
and effects of emergent trends in architecture and urbanism in
the Gulf. Media campaigns and journalistic accounts of the extraordinary
projects that promise to increase economic vitality and attract
tourists have focused attention on the region. However, there
have been few attempts to move beyond the descriptive. We invite
colleagues from across disciplines to develop analyses that identify,
explicate and theorize emergent trends in architecture and urbanism
in the Arab region in general and the Gulf states in particular.
Questions to be considered include: How has economic progress
affected contemporary architecture and urbanism in the Arab region?
What theoretical constructs can be employed to explain transformations
in the built environment? What can be learned from architecture
and urbanism in fast-developing cities like Dubai? How have inhabitants
adapted to the effects of urban development?
While the conference is primarily concerned with conditions in
the Gulf, organizers invite contributions that address how rapid
urbanization affects the production of architecture and the lives
of inhabitants throughout the Arab region and beyond.
Topics of Interest
We invite submissions in all areas related to urbanism and architecture,
particularly work focusing on bridging the gap between theory
and practice. Topics of interest include but are not limited to
the following:
Urban Development
• Economic and Urban Strategies
• Culture, Lifestyle and Urbanity
• The Role of Heritage
• Landscape Strategies in Harsh Climates
• Urban, Suburban and Exurban
• New Urbanism/Transit-Oriented Development
• Tensions between Environmental and Economic Sustainability
• Changing Definitions of Public and Private
• Land use, Transportation and Urban Management
• Land Reclamation as a Means of Expansion
• The Impacts of Privatization
• Uses of Urban Space
• Segregation as an Urban Strategy
• Ecological and social sustainability
• Modernization and Cultural Regeneration
Morphology and Typology
• Emergent Urban Patterns
• Emergent Building Types
• Mixed-Use Developments
• Traditional Neighbourhood Design / Neo-Traditional Design
• Spaces for Shopping, Tourism and Entertainment
• Effects of Neo-Liberal Economic Policies (e.g. Free Zones,
Privatization, etc.)
• The Role of Infrastructure
• Gender, Space and Social Practice
• Form as a Means of Social Control
• Environmental Determinism / Economic Determinism
• Postmodernity and the Architecture of Festivals
• Urban fabric, social life and healthy communities
• Approaches to Precedent
Design and Representation
• Simulations and Simulacra
• Depictions of the Arab World in Themed Developments
• Utopias/Dystopias
• The Role of Branding in Selling Buildings and Cities
• Constructing National Identities through Built Form
• Stylistic Tropes
• Representations vs. Reality in Architecture and Urbanism
• Design as a Marketing Tool
• Geometry and Form Generation
• Distributed Design and Global Practice
Important Dates
Deadline for abstracts: July 30, 2007
Full Paper submission: September 30, 2007
Notification of acceptance: November 15, 2007
Deadline for final papers: January 15, 2008
Submission and Relevant Information
Abstract submissions should be approximately 500 words and must
be in English. Abstract and full paper submissions should be sent
in MS Word or PDF document format. Abstracts should be e-mailed
to scientific committee chairs. Full paper submissions are required
to be done online at the conference website:
www.csaar-center.org/conference/2008A
Full paper format, submission guidelines, registration, accommodation
and further information are available at the conference website.
For further information about submissions, please contact scientific
committee chairs.
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BRITISH ARCHITECTURE AND THE
VERNACULAR
Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
Annual Symposium 2008
in partnership with the Vernacular Architecture Group
The Art Workers' Guild, Queen's Square, London
17 May 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS
The SAHGB symposium in 2008 will be presented in partnership with
the Vernacular Architecture Group. It will be an opportunity to
explore ways of thinking about relationships between vernacular
studies and architectural history in British contexts.
The organising premise is that the term vernacular
need not be understood as referring only to a distinct category
of objects - certain building types from certain periods. Analyses
of hybrid architectural practice and traditions across a great
continuum have been hobbled by this understanding of the word,
and British architectural history and vernacular studies remain
largely un-communicating fields. To remedy this, the vernacular
might be conceived simply as a perspective - one that sees the
local, indigenous, ordinary, everyday, popular or nostalgic. Such
traditions can be traced in the design or adaptive alteration
of any buildings. Thus, all architecture is vernacular, more or
less. Even the greatest 'polite' buildings can be better understood
through heightened awareness of local or indigenous forces, by
emphasising use and underlying shifts in architecture's social
meaning, and by understanding all architectural design as emerging
from social relationships tempered by individual creativity. In
this way, architectural history could engage with canonical or
elite architecture through new and more ethnographic approaches.
We invite proposals for papers that will respond
to these thoughts and explore the scope for the greater integration
of vernacular studies and architectural history in British contexts.
Non-British perspectives will be especially welcomed as an aid
in stepping away from insular historiography.
Abstracts (200- to 400-words) for 20- to 30-minute
papers are invited.
These should be sent, preferably via email, to the convenors:
Peter Guillery (peter.guillery@english-heritage.org.uk),
Daniel Maudlin (daniel.maudlin@plymouth.ac.uk) and
Martin Cherry (martincherry@btinternet.com), or by post to
Peter Guillery, Survey of London, English Heritage, 1 Waterhouse
Square, 138-142 Holborn, London EC1N 2ST.
Submissions must be received by 16 November 2007,
and notices of acceptance will be sent out by 14 January 2008.
It should be borne in mind that publication of the proceedings
is anticipated.
It is the normal expectation of the Society that
speakers will be able to obtain independent financial support
for their travel and accommodation. There are, however, limited
support funds for situations where this is not possible. Applications
for such support should be made with the proposal.
Deadline: 16 November 2007
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Magical
Mysterious Regeneration Tour
Artists, Architecture and the Future of the City
Postgraduate Research Forum
Tate Liverpool
Saturday 14 June 2008
9.30 - 12.30
CALL FOR PAPERS
As part of the Magical Mysterious Regeneration Tour Conference,
12 to 14 June 2008, and in collaboration with the Centre for Architecture
and the Visual Arts (CAVA) and the Department of Philosophy, University
of Liverpool, Tate Liverpool welcome postgraduate student proposals
for three panels on the themes of artists, architecture and the
future of the city, respectively titled Building Utopias, Mapping
Exclusion and Creative Dwellings.
Building Utopias
This panel will focus on contemporary and historical responses
by architects and planners to the city. Themes include utopian
visions of modernism’s high ideal, the planning of ideal
space in the city & its subsequent deterioration, dystopian
future visions, a loss of the city to apocalypse, destitution,
conflict, or nature, the city as an archive, and urban palimpsests.
An ancillary theme will be the reinsertion of narratives of urban
memory into the city landscape, and the interstitial stories of
city space that emerge in forms of urban memory – the recurring
echoes of the past trapped in the residuum of our decaying cityscapes.
Influences in these areas can be seen in the wide-ranging and
diverse ideas of architects, artists and urban theorists such
as Manfredo Tafuri, Archigram, Italo Calvino, Mark Crinson, and
Andreas Huyssen. Topics for potential papers could include, but
are not limited to:
• Totality, visions of utopia and their intersections with
architecture
• Future Visions, Architectures of Technological Idealism
• Dystopia, the out-of-control city, Urban Apocalypse
• Urban memory theory, post-industrial city narratives,
memory & forgetting in urban space
• Urban palimpsests and the city as an archive
• Archaeological traces and fragments in the built environment
The panel will be chaired by Richard Koeck, City in Film, University
of Liverpool
Mapping Exclusion
This panel will look at sociological and historical methods of
analysing the zoning of cities, and will consider some of the
contested spatial practices shaping the social fabric of urban
environments. The separation of cities into moneyed and poor,
the exclusion of groups, shanty towns, favelas and the
informal architectures of the unplanned city contrasted with the
rise of gated communities, the regimented, controlled social space
of the city. We seek papers that give insight into the wide range
of social, political, economic and cultural factors that motivate
zonings, and also the implications of these divisions on the inhabitants
of city spaces.
Proposals are invited for individual papers addressing all aspects
of zoning and exclusion in the city. Interdisciplinary approaches
are welcome. Topics for discussion could include, but are not
limited to:
• Zoning of city space, role of local authorities and development
agencies, gated communities, exclusion, gentrification
• Informal architecture, unplanned city space, resistance
to urban planning, dereliction, wasteland, squats, ‘non-productive’
spaces
• Spaces of consumption, retail and leisure zoning, heritage,
theme parks, cultural quarters, non-places and contractual spaces
• Social control, surveillance, CCTV, regulating movement,
border control, abstract spaces
• Embodied, gendered, sexualised, racialised and diasporic
city spaces
• Conurbation, centre/periphery, suburban dynamics, business,
industrial, and retail parks, orbital routes, transport networks,
hubs
The panel will be chaired by Les Roberts, City in Film, University
of Liverpool.
Creative Dwellings
How artists engage with regenerating city space is not just an
issue for contemporary practice: ever since city space has existed,
artists have deliberated the energizing and equally troubling
dynamic it brings to their work. From Renaissance Italian cityscapes,
through Rembrandt van Rijn’s examination of the Dutch town
hood, the Impressionist Salon des Refuses grappling with post-Haussmann
Paris, through 60s art communes on the barricades, to present
day negotiations between city authorities and artistic groupings,
artists have engaged with the societal issues of urban dwelling
in a range of ways. As the constructivist slogan would have it,
'the streets our brushes, the squares our palettes'.
We welcome proposals that examine the ways in which artists have
inhabited and engaged with city space, both in their practices
and lives. Different strands for proposals could include, but
are not restricted to:
• Home and Homeliness
• Gentrification, loft living and the unofficial misuse
of cities
• 60s social activist art space, institutional critique
& urban use of Land Art principles
• Flânerie, the drift and artistic imagining of walking
city space
• Artistic critiques of urban regeneration
• Memory, Art and urban decay and renewal
The panel will be chaired by Paul Sullivan, Director of Static
Proposals for papers for all 3 sessions,
accompanied by a brief academic CV/biography, can be submitted
to liverpool.research.forum@tate.org.uk and should be no longer
than one side of A4 in length. Please put ‘Building Utopias/Mapping
Exclusion/Creative Dwellings’ in the header, as appropriate.
The deadline for submissions is Monday 21 April 2008.
For more information please visit the conference
website:
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/eventseducation/symposia/13812.htm
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Graduate
Conference: Luce Irigaray
Queen Mary College, University of London
School of Business and Management
15-21 June 2008
Luce Irigaray, the pre-eminent feminist, will be
in residence in Queen Mary in June 2008. She will be conducting
a week long seminar series for PhD students and will also give
a public talk on the 18th June 2008 (theme to be advertised soon).
We welcome abstracts from PhD students on the following
themes. Please note that we also welcome abstracts that may not
directly connect to these themes but to other ways of integrating
Irigaray's work into social science research.
*The treatment of personal or cultural traumatic experience
*The resources that various arts can offer for dwelling in oneself
and with the other(s)
*The maternal order and feminine genealogy
*The interpretation and embodiment of the divine today
*The contribution of sexuate difference to personal and social
development
*New perspectives in philosophy
Deadline for submissions: 30th April 2008
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The
Body Conference
Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference organised by doctoral
students for doctoral students and the Researcher and Graduate
School in Humanities
Cardiff University
Thursday 19 & Friday 20 June 2008
Call for Papers (deadline 10 April)
The principal aim of ‘The Body’ conference is to encourage
doctoral researchers to consider how ‘The Body’ may
come to bear on their own subjects of research. ‘The Body’
is intended to encompass ideology and society, e.g. the physical
body used as an analogy or metaphor for the social body, as well
as for a corpus of knowledge, legal person, ‘person’
of the state, the body politic, and the body as a site of contention
in sexual politics.
Following the success of last year’s conference
on ‘Reading: Images, Texts, Artefacts’, this conference
will represent a variety of humanities disciplines including Architecture,
Cultural Studies, English, Fine Art, History, Journalism, Modern
Languages, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Religious Studies and
Welsh, providing a framework for interdisciplinary cross fertilisation.
Proposals for panels and papers are invited from
PhD students across Wales, the UK and overseas. Current panels
include:
*Body and Ritual (religious ritual, cultural ritual,
the supernatural, folklore)
*Body and Landscape (urban landscape, environment, cultural sites,
interaction between people and heritage, communities)
*Body and Space (architecture, personal space, futuristic bodies)
*Body and Performance (dance, music, display, performance art,
gesture)
*Representing the Body (media, art, art and description)
*Body and Identity (body as a source of identity, cross cultural
perceptions of the body, connection between body and identity,
gender)
*The Body as a Metaphor / Language and the Body (literature, non-verbal
communication/body language, linguistics, Welsh Culture/language)
*Active and Interactive Bodies (sport, war, physical and social
interaction, community)
*Body Politic (person of the state, body as state)
*Rights of the Body (human rights, humanitarianism)
*Body of Knowledge (corpus, memory)
*Clothing the Body (body art, piercing, tattoos, clothing, fashion
history)
Please note that suggestions are welcome for additional
panel titles.
The deadline for proposals is Thursday 10 April
2008. To submit a paper, please send a 200-word abstract of the
paper’s contribution to the conference theme (stating which
panel you wish to present in) to:
BodyConference@cf.ac.uk
Papers should be 20 minutes maximum and proposals
should include contact details and a brief biographical note.
For further details please go to:
www.cardiff.ac.uk/gsh
or contact Rebecca Green at
BodyConference@cf.ac.uk
The Body Conference is supported by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council and Cardiff
University.
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Call for Papers
The Aesthetics of Trash: Objects
and Obsolescence in Cultural Perspective
University College Dublin, Ireland
4-6 September 2008.
For full details please visit:
http://www.ucd.ie/sllf/Research/Conferences/conferences.html
A book publication based on the conference is planned.
Deadline for submissions: Friday 14th December
2007.
Abstracts of max 300 words should be submitted to the organisers:
Dr Gillian Pye or Dr Simone Schroth:
gillian.pye@ucd.ie
simone.schroth@ucd.ie
School of Languages and Literatures
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4
Ireland
Tel. + 353 1 7168180 + 353 1 7168433
Fax + 353 1 7161175
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THE
CHALLENGE OF CHANGE: 10th International Docomomo Conference
TU Delft, Netherlands
17-19 September 2008
The 2008 International Docomomo Conference focuses
on the manifold challenges and dilemmas of change and continuity
in the Modern Movement. The architecture of the Modern Movement
was always future oriented, and had a firm and optimistic belief
in the possibilities of progress. Yet these buildings now belong
to the past and have become eligible for listing and preservation.
This evolution has created the paradox of the modern monument
and has raised questions of principle concerning the issues of
conservation, renovation and transformation of modern buildings.
It leads to the need to revisit ideals and key concepts of the
Modern Movement, which cannot always be reconciled with the acts
of reconstruction that are an integral part of those practices
of conservation, renovation and transformation.
Docomomo invites architects, researchers, historians
and other parties involved in the processes of preservation, conservation,
renovation and transformation to investigate the paradox of the
modern monument and to reflect on the manifold challenges and
dilemmas of change and continuity. Original papers are invited
for submission under the following sub-themes:
Change and continuity;
restructuring cities and landscape;
shifts in programme and flexibility;
education in transformation;
technology, progress, sustainability.
Intriguing results, high quality and thought provoking-papers
or case studies that go beyond the theoretical, providing valuable
insights and suggestions for conserving and re-using Modern Movement
architecture will be strongly favoured.
Round-table sessions have been introduced in which
small groups of active participants (15-20) are involved in discussion
and debate. The conclusions of the different sessions will be
presented by their chairs, discussed, and then combined into the
‘Rotterdam Conclusions’. Issues for these round-table
sessions related to the following topics are invited for submission:
Post-war modern housing; the Modern Movement in the historically
layered city; (public) strategies for conservation and change;
education of the Modern Movement; material issues of sustainability;
functional continuity; architectural continuity by adaptive re-use;
religious buildings; free subject.
Docomomo invites architects, researchers, historians
and other parties involved in the processes of preservation, conservation,
renovation and transformation to submit specific urgent issues
that should be discussed on a national or international scale
within the theme of the conference.
Please see website for further information, and
for the template for the submission of abstracts for papers, case
studies and round table sessions: www.docomomo2008.nl
Deadline: 15 October 2007
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Video Killed the Radio Star
Visual
Information Literacy Symposium
University of Sheffield
31 October & 1 November 2008
This open symposium, hosted by Sheffield University
School of Architecture and funded by the Centre for Inquiry-based
Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences, invites contributions
for papers from architects and designers, architectural pedagogues
and philosophers, art historians, sociologists and cultural theorists.
CALL FOR PAPERS
In his essay ‘Can Television Teach?’, Umberto Eco
examines the use of television in a critically oriented education
and emphasizes the importance of codes and subcodes in the transmission
of messages from sender to receiver. Victor Hugo (‘This
will Kill That’), Walter Benjamin (‘The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’) and The Buggles
(‘Video Killed the Radio Star’) all describe or lament
the succession of one method of reproduction by another, implying
loss as a consequence of change. Hugo predicts that the popularisation
of written word by means of the printing press will render the
populace illiterate in terms of reading their culture through
symbolic architectural representation, Benjamin predicts the democratisation
of the work of art in the loss of its ‘aura’, The
Buggles anticipate the aural tradition replaced by visual material.
The aim of this symposium is to investigate how
the rules of scholarly endeavour might apply to continually expanding
and changing new media. How do conventions and concepts of literacy
apply when the material to be read and interpreted shifts within
a timescale of less than a generation? In particular, whether
and how designers can intelligently appropriate visual material
in a way that can be subjected to rigorous and scholarly critique?
This inter-disciplinary symposium seeks to explore
issues of visual literacy across historical periods and within
cultural, political and social contexts. Seeking to encourage
innovative inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly
welcome papers from all disciplines,
In particular papers, workshops and presentations
are invited on any of the following themes:
1. Visual Literacy and Symbolism
2. Visual Culture and Literacy
3. Visual Literacy and the Work of Art
Papers will be considered on any related theme.
Abstracts of 250 words are due by 2 May by email to s.k.clark@sheffield.ac.uk
250 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
2nd May 2008. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a
full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 29th August 2008.
Abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following
this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract,
body of abstract. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such
as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer
to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply
from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal.
We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route
or resend.
Organising Chairs:
Susi Clark
Director of Learning & Teaching,
Sheffield School of Architecture,
University of Sheffield, UK
E-Mail: s.k.clark@sheffield.ac.uk
http://www.visualinformationliteracy.group.shef.ac.uk/
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