Strategic Design Research Journal - Special Issue on 'Design contributions for the COVID-19 global emergency'

The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic disease (COVID-19), appeared for the first time in Wuhan (Hubei Province, China) in late 2019 and rapidly spread in the rest of the world since the early months of 2020, has produced a significant and sadly dramatic impact in the life of all people. To date (April 22th, 2020), over 2.550.000 people have shown symptoms and over 175.000 died for health and respiratory problems [1]. While the entire humanity feels dangerously powerless at the same time an unprecedented amount of initiatives across the world have shown human creativity and resilience. The entire scientific community is cohesive in facing this emergency and the severe health-related issues that have arisen in the last months.

In this unparalleled scenario, the global Design community is called to act. And it is doing it! The new instances pointed out by the global emergencies allow reflecting to the ways the Design discipline can answer to unprecedented phenomena, with the will to foresee likely

ABE Journal - Entanglements of Architecture and Comfort beyond the Temperate Zone

Section guest-edited by Jiat-Hwee Chang, National University of Singapore (Singapore) and Daniel Ryan, University of Sydney (Australia).

The dominant discourse on comfort in architecture today is one that is seen as both universal—with slight variations across different geographies, climates, cultures, and societies—and ahistorical—timeless in that comfort is premised on supposedly immutable human biological responses to the environment. The universalist claims—in both space and time, across geographies and histories—of the discourse on comfort are typical of any technoscientific constructions in which technological and scientific developments are deeply intertwined and mutually constitutive. However, as Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway, among other Science Technology Studies scholars, have pointed out, technoscientific knowledge is situated knowledge. In the case of comfort, the recent discourse was primarily produced by researchers based in or originating from Europe and North America, and was wittingly or unwittingly shaped by their temperate norms and assumptions. Taught in architectural curricula and codified into building standards, the Euro-American-centric

European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes - Curating the city: artistic practices and urban transformations

The European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, vol 3, no 1.

Edited by Annalisa Trentin, Anna Rosellini, Amir Djalali  |  Download a PDF version of this call.

Since the end of the 1970s, exhibitions, museums and artistic events have gained a central role in shaping the transformation of the city. Art, culture and knowledge have become the instruments through which cities have faced the crisis of industrial economy and the rise of new paradigms and values of urban development.

Art has a demonstrated impact in urban regeneration processes. While the presence of artists has been linked to the rise of the financial attractiveness of neighbourhoods, private and public museum institutions are leading actors in urban development, reclaiming former industrial sites and boosting land value in low-income neighbourhoods. At the same time, Biennials, Triennials, summer festivals, concerts and cultural events are seen by city administrators and planners as opportunities to promote investments in the city, attract capitals and visitors, and improving the image of the city.

Cultural events and initiatives are not only instruments in the hands of urban planners, but they are changing the way in which the city is planned and designed. Curatorial practices seem to have become the new paradigm for all the other disciplines traditionally involved in the transformation, design and construction of the city. Architecture and urban planning are more and more becoming curatorial activities, borrowing their methods from artistic and museum practices.

Urban planning is no longer made by systematic decisions and long-term strategies that take in consideration the entire city and its territory, but through occasional interventions in specific areas. Design is more and more the act of selecting, organizing and integrating existing elements, resources and ideas in temporary assemblages, avoiding the definition of

Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture - 'Collections' - September 2019

“Here, indeed, lies the whole miracle of collecting. For it is invariably oneself  that one collects.”[1]

“Perhaps the most deeply hidden motive of the person who collects can be described this way: he takes up the struggle against dispersion. Right from the start, the great collector is struck by the confusion, by the scatter, in which the things of the world are found.”[2]

The interior is a repository for collections, whether curated as a body of work for a museum or the personal possessions of an individual. Collections can be thematic, nostalgic, scientific, artificial and natural, ranging in scale from large to small, physical to ephemeral, critical or superfluous, from the obviously curated to seemingly random. Collections convey knowledge of heritage, culture, society and evolution, protecting specimens and objects of material culture for generations to view. They allow for comparison between objects and create relationships between them where there were none.  These can be viewed in large institutional museums that have not been without contention with works pilfered from original sites.  In juxtaposition, everyday objects are celebrated and curated in unexpected locations such as the MmuseumM housed in a converted elevator shaft.  As subject matter, collections can range from decorative to the obsessive, or challenge conventions to curatorial statements about truth and fiction as found in the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  The interior is the site for collections which are given a descriptive and physical framework through the lens of curators, exhibition designers, interior designers and architects who set the stage for objects and viewers.

Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture seeks submissions that address the topic of collections.  Submissions can take the form of essays, design work, visual collections, musings, alternative interpretations to collections, all the while situating them within the broader context of interiors.  Emphasis will be placed on non-traditional content in order to open up the opportunity for new insight on how collections are viewed and interpreted.

[1] Jean Baudrillard, “The Systems of Collecting”, in Cultures of Collecting edited by John Elsner, Roger Cardinal, (Reaktion Books, London, 1994) p.12.
[2] Walter Benjamin, “The Collector”, in The Arcades Project. (Harvard University Press, 1999) p. 211.

Phase 1: Note of Interest – 30 September 2019

Phase 2: Full Submissions – 1 March 1 2020

For more information see the Interiors call for papers site.

LA+ call for papers - 'Community' - September 2019

Almost everything that landscape architects design is ultimately for a “community.” Community can be the boon or bane of a project, and oftentimes both. 

This issue of LA+ aims to explore how, over time, each of us moves in and out of multiple communities, shaping them as they shape us and in turn shaping our landscapes and cities. We ask how different disciplines construct different ideas of community, how those communities are anchored in space and time, whose interests they serve, and what traces they leave. And we examine how—in this pluralistic, fragmented, and fluid world—designers can meaningfully engage with communities.

Deadline for Abstracts: 15 September 2019

See the LA+ submissions webpage for more information.

Nexus Network Journal - Patterns and Spatial Organisation: Culture, History and Future Perspectives

Guest Editors: Yannis Zavoleas (University of New South Wales) & Mark Taylor (Swinburne University of Technology)

The main purpose of this issue is to link advanced technological endeavours with core discourse in architecture and urban design (urbanism) developed since early twentieth-century modernism.

This Call for Papers can be downloaded at CFP_Patterns and Spatial Organisation.

Patterns have had a long association with architecture, from early uses as geometric ordering systems and the recognition of patterns within patterns, spanning across Greek, Roman, Islamic, and many other distinct architectural eras. More recent instances of aperiodic packing recognised non-repetitive and in times unpredictable geometry, whether conveyed through two-dimensional tiling or three-dimensional polyhedra and, in a sense,

Strategic Design Research Journal - Relating Systems Thinking and Design / Systemic Design and co-creation processes for territorial enhancement

Strategic Design Research Journal website.

Guest editors: Silvia Barbero, Amina Pereno | Vol. 13, n. 2 (May-August 2020)

Information for Contributors

The world we live in is hectic and multifaceted, characterized by continuous changes that are more frequent, radical and dramatic than ever before. Their dimension rapidly shifts from local to global and viceversa, due to the increased interconnected nature of relations, affecting society at many different levels. This results in a rising complexity that requires new creative solutions with a high degree of adaptability to be properly addressed. It is in this scenario that Systemic Design can effectively integrate systems thinking and its

Special Issue of Design Studies: Design Methods and Processes for Pervasive Healthcare (Aug 2019)

Deadline for submissions: 23 August 2019

Guest Editors: Ben Salem (University of Liverpool, UK), Natalia Romero (Delft University of Technology, NL, JungKyoon Yoon (Cornell University, USA).

Background

This special issue is a continuation of a workshop Design Contributions to Pervasive Healthcare (DCPH), organised as part of the 13th EAI, International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare - 20-23 May 2019, Trento, Italy.

While authors of papers submitted to the workshop have been invited to submit a revised

Montreal Architectural Review - 'Thinking Architecture'

Special Issue: Thinking Architecture

Guest Editor: Dr. Lisa Landrum

Closing Date: 1 September 2019

This Call for Thinking, for the sixth volume of the Montreal Architectural Review, invites papers exploring crucial manifestations, modalities and milieus of architectural thinking.

Contributions may probe any combination of the following themes, considered through analysis of specific discursive practices and/or built works from around the world and across time:

• the inherently embodied, situated, social and material modes of architectural thinking;
• ensemble thinking, or thinking in concert (and in tension) with plural agents in dramatic situations;
• places for thinking, which, as Marco Frascari argued, enable quests for wonder, truth, justice, happiness and a beautiful life;
• philosophical models for architectural thinking, such as interpretations of what Aristotle called in Nicomachean Ethics “architectonic phronēsis” [see MAR, vol. 2 (2015)]; and
• habits of thinking fostered via architectural education. Alberto Pérez-Gómez has argued that the architectural education should focus not on solutions, but on “tactics for thought” nurtured through creative dialogue and critical debate. What are the best pedagogical strategies to cultivate these tactics for thought, so as to best prepare future architects to think and act well – even in an emergency?

We hereby invite submissions related to the history and philosophy of architecture on the above theme in one of three formats: scholarly essays (5,000 – 7,500 words, including endnotes); book reviews (1,000 – 1,500 words); or discursive experiments in deliberative or