Call for Papers: Hybrid Symposium: Remote Practices: Architecture in Proximity. Sydney, 8-9 October 2020
Earlier this year, a CfP entitled ‘remote practices’ proposed to explore how architecture’s complex and distant interfaces are being intensified through a mass globalization of the discipline. In it the symposium organizers sought to explore how the remote practice of architecture has become inherent in the way phases of early ideation to late production could take on surprising transformations as architects and critics use different tools to manifest ideas and imaginations to the otherwise distant and invisible; to design, describe and critique future and past constructions in absentia. In late January 2020, a Covid-19 pandemic emerged and the proposed conference was put on hold.
As Covid-19 rapidly infected persons across the world, it made many of the issues wished to discuss in the original CfP more timely as lockdowns were enforced globally to reduce the rate and risk of contagion and death. As people retreated to their homes, the business of doing architecture in schools and offices also shifted into this temporary holding space. Face-to-face encounters were curtailed in favour of virtual meetings. Architecture, a discipline which thrives on expression and imagination, and which had already been remotely practised by way of translation across different media and sites, now takes on a further dimension of distancing; this time in the absence of a physical community of architects, designers, teachers and students.
This symposium is interested in the future, and legacy, of architecture after the pandemic. Already production of drawings and models take place on the table at the office, and later, these ideas are transferred onto the construction site. The distances between these different modes of doing architecture – drawings, diagrams and models, manifestos and critiques in the printed form; augmented reality walkthroughs and digital films; digital prefabrication technologies, and the built form – create several thresholds by which architecture may already be understood as a remote practice. Yet, confronted with a failing global economy, the temporary stoppage of travel, the still undefined length of closure of many construction sites, schools of architecture, and the absence of office environments where ideas can be openly discussed and materialized through conversation, what are the local and global implications which this pandemic presents for the future pedagogy, practice and critique of architecture?
The symposium invites papers and creative work to participate in a hybrid platform of virtual presentations and local participants focusing on the areas of pedagogy, practice, and critique. You can access here the full call for papers for a detailed description of the possible themes.
Abstracts of no more than 350 words, accompanied by an 80-word biographical profile, and 1 image (JPG, 300dpi) are to be submitted to remotepractices@gmail.com by 28 July 2020.