Submission deadline:

June 9, 2023

Architecture Archives of the Future

Delft and Rotterdam
Netherlands

How to futurise the past, and curate the future? The Jaap Bakema Study Centre (JBSC) invites contributions to its annual conference, which is dedicated to architecture archives, research and exhibitions. The open call welcomes proposals from academics and practitioners alike. With this year’s conference, the JBSC celebrates its 10th anniversary and the centennial of the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. To celebrate the two anniversaries, the conference aims to collectively investigate the future of curatorial practices, architectural legacies, memory and knowledge, and so the future narratives of the manifold histories yet unknown. Architecture Archives of the Future will delve into the intersections and evolving relationships between architectural practice, archival research, and exhibition making. The questions the organizers seek to explore range from institutional ones – examining the politics of archiving and exhibiting – to the role of technologies in preserving, curating, and communicating architectural archives.

Futurising the past

A search to expand the open society idea naturally involves a commitment to education, accessibility and participation. It leads to profound reflections on institutional gatekeeping, and on the curation of archival materials, in the broadest sense imaginable. These reflections come with questions of care, responsibility, and accountability, with heritage practice and activism helping to illuminate the power dynamics and representations in archival practices. Futurising the past calls for approaches that critically re-assess the received histories. How to reconsider geneaologies, notions of authorship and originality? How to recognise and bring in overlooked voices or marginalised positions? What sort of new epistemological models might emerge from the changes affecting the institutional memory of the discipline? We are also interested in developments within architecture schools: in what ways do educational institutions seek to incorporate the archive and curatorial practices in their curricula? How can archives and exhibitions be a tool for innovation in education and research?

Curating the future

Technology remains a force for both disruption and liberation, while installing new regimes. This digital turn has created a whole new reality in the field of archives and knowledge dissemination, in which local institutions connect into larger networks with new tools and methods for research (data-oriented and AI-driven), while new formats for public outreach and storytelling become possible. We invite contributions which explore the use of these technologies to critically probe and foster notions of democracy while radically expanding the idea of an open society, in the spirit of diversity and inclusiveness, relationality and empowerment. Contributions must seek to explore how these innovations in architectural archiving and exhibition practices can help project new ideas into the future. What sort of architectural legacies do we wish to propose? How can the archive and the museum become productive sites for regeneration? How can the digital reconnect architectural design and practice with history?

In short, how to futurise the past, and curate the future?

Submission:

Abstracts of 300-500 words plus a short bio (300 words max) should be sent to Fatma Tanış. The aim is to have the conference proceedings published by the conference date.
Deadline submissions of abstracts: 9 June 2023 

More information can be found in the full call for papers here.

Share this post

News from the field

Drawing Attention to the Periphery

October 25-27, 2023 Panel session for AHRA conference on Situated Ecologies of Care Portsmouth School of Architecture, UK. Submission deadline for abstracts: June 12, 2023 This paper session asks: How is the periphery reconfigured against collective life, culture,...

Research Assistant in the Field of Architecture and Landscape

Leibniz University Hanover The Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, Department of Architectural Theory (Prof. Dr. Nathalie Bredella), invites applications for the position of a Research Assistant (m/f/d) in the...

Materia Arquitectura N°25: Out of Place Matter

MATERIA ARQUITECTURA is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes original research, which can be exploratory and speculative. It is also open to visual and imaginative proposals. Its aim is to contribute to the development and questioning of the discipline and...

German Colonial Building Cultures in 100 Primary Sources

Exhibition at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich, Germany, 20 April – 30 June 2023 From about 1880 to 1920, the German Empire was one of the European colonial powers. Its possessions included territories on three continents: in Africa (German South-West...