Architectural Studies is a biannual conference series held by the Department of Architecture at Yeditepe University. The conference intends to facilitate intellectual exchange on disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship and practices of architecture through the subcategories foundations, positions, and words. (1) Foundations denote dispositions that act as the limits and potentials of architectural knowledge; (2) Positions entail setting a critical perspective within architectural scholarship and practices; (3) Words highlight the practice of writing (on/in) architecture in manifolds forms including criticism, narration, and documentation. Through its framework and biannually varying thematic foci, the conference encourages contributions that critically engage with the existing frameworks and convictions that shape architectural discourse, practices, and constructs.
The first Architectural Studies Conference takes encounters with the recent past of architecture focusing mainly on the first two decades of the 21st Century. While this time period witnessed a vast increase in the number of architectural research with a rich variety of approaches, such an increase concurrently rendered evaluating possible implications more difficult. The incentive to bring together and designate an agenda of architectural theories, arguably, has left its place to respond to urgent crises regarding ecology, violent conflicts, economic ambiguity, digital dependence, social injustice, and discrimination through gender and postcolonial theories as well as many others, thereby making the task of a possible articulation of architectural research methods a rather delicate one. The first of the conference series aims to bring together studies that present possible ways of doing research through the theme of encounter.
The word ‘encounter’ has a number of connotations. An encounter may be accidental or intentional, spontaneous or preplanned, as well as confrontational or conforming. A researcher of architectural studies may look into a particular topic, an anecdote, a design practice, or even a piece of writing that already depicts an encounter within the 21st Century architectural culture. However, papers that deliberately invent and execute such confrontations are also encouraged.
The first Architectural Studies Conference, which will be held on 19-21 May 2023, calls for contributions that confront architecture and its culture through three sub-categorical frameworks; foundations, positions, and words. The conference invites scholars, researchers as well as practitioners from around the world to share their works and ideas.
Submissions are due by 27 May 2022.
More information and the full call for papers can be found here.