2nd International Conference | June 06-08, 2025
Call for Abstracts: Architecture as Intervention Through and Beyond Building
Architecture is a set of practices that revolve around the act of building. While some parts of the planet are inordinately overbuilt, some parts remain unoccupied. As the urban-rural dichotomy slowly dissolves into being in or off the grid, the act of building often brings about urban expansion and proliferation. In the midst of planetary challenges, humanitarian crises, and pervasive spatial injustices, an inquiry persists: What are we currently building, and why do we continue to do so? These questions transcend prevailing ways of construction. They call for an examination of the existential, ethical, and socio-economic dimensions of architecture. Can architectural interventions present solutions? Or, do they amplify existing problems?
The second conference of Architectural Studies Architecture as Intervention Through and Beyond Building takes architectural practices as interventions. An intervention can be about preventing harm or improving the functioning of architectural products. Interventions can target particular conditions as well as processes. In that regard, abstracts presented in the conference are expected to encapsulate architectural practices within their context.
The Foundations subtitle intends to encapsulate how architecture has tackled the problem of building and seeks precursors in order to learn from them. The word foundations imply the conditions in which architectural interventions operate. How has architecture defined and worked with building as a problem so far? Is it possible to trace a continuous effort in defining such a problem in architecture, or, are the existing examples disparate?
The Positions subtitle calls for submissions that focus on architects’, scholars’ or researchers’ positions regarding the question of intervention through or beyond building. Positions prioritizes the ways in which people have responded to this problem and investigates whether they have challenged existing limits of architectural practices.
Submissions under the third group Words are expected to offer criticism or alternative interpretations of architectural work (in the form of projects, images, texts or built structures) regarding the act of building as intervention, focusing on the writing of architecture and its representation.
The conference calls for an interdisciplinary dialogue that goes beyond physical structures and reflects on the wide impact and responsibility embedded in the act of building in the 21st Century or from earlier with a goal to learn from it.