Moving Parts examines architecture as a field constituted through movement. It argues that movement, understood as the displacement and transformation of things and ideas across space and time, has always shaped architectural production. However, the mobilization of people, labor, materials, technologies, images, and capital has rapidly accelerated since the onset of global capitalism, as technologies of logistics and information have amplified processes of circulation and globalization.
This EAHN thematic conference proposes to examine architecture as a field constituted through movement across different temporalities and geographies. By foregrounding movement as an analytic rather than merely descriptive condition, the conference brings into a single framework four interrelated strands of inquiry. Together, these strands position movement as a methodological lens through which architecture can be analysed as a process rather than a static artefact:
(A) Labor and expertise —
such as the migration of skilled and unskilled workers, the transfer of knowledge, and systems of management
(B) Material and infrastructural flows —
including the circulation of materials, technologies, and energy, and the logistical systems that organize them
(C) Financial and regulatory circulation —
involving capital, standards, and governance structures
(D) Media, forms, and afterlives —
that may encompass the movement of images, typologies, and buildings across contexts and time
We invite paper proposals that address architectural and urban history through any of these strands. The conference foregrounds the conditions of global capitalism, but is not limited to the modern or contemporary period. Contributions addressing the early modern era, when empires, trade networks, artisanal migrations, and the circulation of images and building knowledge already structured architectural production across wide geographies, are equally welcome. We particularly encourage submissions that examine the architectures and geographies of Southeast Asia in relation to Europe and wider circuits of exchange.
The Call for Papers will open on September 1, 2026 and close on December 1, 2026.