Dialectic - July 2018

Deadline for submissions: 27 July 2018

Authors are invited to submit works for the FIFTH issue (volume 3, issue 1)of Dialectic, a biannual journal devoted to the critical and creative examination of issues that affect design education, research, and inquiry.

Dialectic’s fifth issue seeks papers and visual narratives that critically examine, interrogate or reveal how and why design processes informed by various aspects of making have affected (or should affect) the workings of complex systems wherein people “actively participate in generating the content and quality of [their] experiences.” (excerpted from Armstrong, H., Blume, M., Chochinov, A., Davis, M. et al “The AIGA Designer of 2025,” published by AIGA, NY, NY, USA, 2017). Papers and visual narratives that explore design’s evolution from being rooted in the making of artifacts and messages to its expansion into making more human-centered endeavors rooted in experiences, services, interactions and even public policies are welcomed. Submissions are also encouraged that effectively document how design processes can or should affect collaborations that involve broadly informed, egalitarian conversations-cum-collaborations.

Dialectic’s Editorial Board hopes that AIGA DEC “MAKE” conference attendees will consider

Architectural Theory Review Special Issue: 'Architecture and Crowds'

Architectural Theory Review

In 1961, Elias Canetti published Crowds and Power. In this book, Canetti suggests that in essence there are two categories of crowds: the open and the closed crowd. The “open” crowd is a natural crowd: it gathers spontaneously, it exists as long as it grows, and it disintegrates as soon as it stops growing. On the other side of the spectrum is the “closed” crowd. This type renounces growth and emphasizes permanence. It has a boundary and creates a space for itself, which it fills. Canetti writes: “The building is waiting for them [the crowd]; it exists for their sake and, so long as it is there, they will be able to meet in the same manner. The space is theirs, even during the ebb, and in its emptiness it reminds them of the flood.”

Although crowd historiography experienced a heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, concomitant research in architectural history, theory, urban planning and urban design remained largely absent. This is surprising given that the concept of the crowd is intricately bound to these disciplines. The organisation of space can both shape and obstruct the formation of crowds. The most celebrated examples of planning in the grand manner—think of Haussmann’s Paris—are often interpreted as projections of state or imperial power, designed to suppress or control crowd formation. Yet architecture and urban design is not always utilised in the service of state power and some public projects have a radical or democratic intent. Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP in São Paolo, for instance, is suspended from two massive portal frames, deliberately creating a large open area at street level to facilitate crowd formation along the Avenida Paulista, a longstanding site of protest.

Certain building types are specifically designed for the assembly of “closed” crowds. Their design not only determines the size and organisation of the crowd, as well as its flows and

Artifact: Journal of Design Practice

Artifact: Journal of Design Practice is a scholarly peer-reviewed journal that publishes double-blind peer-reviewed design research broadly concerned with examining the nature of, developments in, and understandings of design practices. Design research is rapidly becoming a knowledge-intensive field characterized by an overwhelming scholarly interest in design’s many interfaces. These range from the role of design in solving complex societal problems to enhancing the sustainability and profitability of businesses across industries and geographies.

This trajectory in many ways focuses attention on processes and social construction of meanings rather than design process outcomes. Against this backdrop, the journal provides an outlet for researchers across disciplines and research approaches and encourages contributions from diverse perspectives that examine practices related to traditional and novel: activities of design, professions of design, and organizational uses of design. Moreover, the journal aims to reflect recent decades’ substantial transformation of the field of design research with contributions that touch on design practices from a broad spectrum of scientific fields such as semiotics, design semantics, critical

TECHNOLOGY | ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN (TAD): Urbanizing

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2018

Urbanizing is an active process.  More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and by the year 2050 greater than two-thirds will be urban dwellers due to migration and increased birth rates.[1]  Meanwhile, our urban footprint comprises only 3% of the earth’s surface, establishing a density that imbues the effects of past decision-making, and underscores the importance of future ones.[2]   We find ourselves now accelerating into global urbanization with neither the certainty of past slowness nor the benefit of applicable precedents.  As the rate of urbanization outpaces its research outcomes, a groundswell of problem-oriented research is needed.

While cities are shaped by differentiated forces in context-specific combinations, their respective urban dwellers experience many similar problems.  Housing shortages, supply chains and lifeline infrastructure systems warrant assessment and demand solutions.  Acute shocks and chronic stresses prompt resilience, and environmental impacts compel drawdown.  The sharing economy elicits new policies, and autonomous technologies await testing in the urban realm. At the same time, municipal leaders are desperate for civic

The Plan Journal: 'The Shared Project'

The Plan Journal, vol. 3 [2018], no. 2 [Fall]

The Shared Project

How modes of operation, design strategies and public engagement are being redefined by new technologies for the architectural project of “the sharing society”

“… to restore architecture and planning to a position where they can have a real positive

impact on society may even demand destroying the mythology of the architect as visionary.”

(Wouter Vantisphout)

“…today, not letting others use your work can mean irrelevance.”

(Cathy Casserly, former CEO at Creative Commons)

The “sharing economy” and the “sharing society,” made possible by the new technologies of the last decades, have significantly changed our culture. Architecture and the other design fields have not been immune from this epochal change and, in some instances, have in fact tried to embrace it and leveraged it to their own advantage. New communications technologies, shared design platforms, interactive ways of engaging the wider public of design projects, as well as the explosion of social media itself, have triggered a series of changes that have gone beyond superficial fashion trends to really transform the way the project is conceived, developed, assessed, constructed and used.

Increasingly collaborative and cross-disciplinary modes of practice are shaping up the landscape of the design professions by exploiting, as well as demanding, new technologies

LA+ ICONOCLAST is an international open design ideas competition

LA+ ICONOCLAST asks you to reimagine and redesign Central Park for the 21st century. LA+ ICONOCLAST is an international open design ideas competition. No professional qualifications are required to enter.

LA+ ICONOCLAST asks you to redesign New York’s Central Park, which has been fictionally devastated by eco-terrorists. Here’s the brief:

Central Park is arguably the canonical work of modern landscape architecture. Its aesthetic and socio-political ideals of health, beauty and democracy underpin the profession of landscape architecture, which Olmsted first named, to this day. Writing of the park in 1973, the artist Robert Smithson claimed that Olmsted “combined both art and reclamation in