Architecture Is All Over
A Workshop Investigating Architecture in the Context of Cross-Disciplinary Spatial Practices
February 12, 2011
OCAD University
Toronto, Ontario

Building projects continue to proliferate at a global scale in spite of the economic climate. Architectural concepts are being incorporated by a variety of discourses. Ever-expanding arrays of spatial practices are able to be considered within the bounds of the discipline. Is architecture becoming ubiquitous?

Or think about the same circumstances a different way:
Architects are constructing ephemeral environments, micro-scalar interventions and even invisible phenomena. Other fields are unremittingly appropriating architecture. The cleft between the discipline of architecture and its own professional practice is deepening. Is architecture evaporating?

Either way, it is becoming more apparent that architecture needs to be re-conceptualized to address disciplinary conditions that are becoming harder to ignore. Where do we go from here?

This workshop is an opportunity for creative thinkers and practitioners from a variety of disciplines to work through the paradoxical expansion and contraction of architecture as it both affects and is affected by a larger milieu, and as it is situated within a range of cross-disciplinary spatial practices. We seek innovative discussion papers, graphic provocations and design-based proposals from emerging practitioners and theorists that analyze, re-imagine or foment architecture in new ways.

Here are the rules of the game:

1. At the core of each discussion paper and design-based/graphic proposal should be a specific, fresh and speculative proposal for thinking or acting architecture differently.
2. Submissions should evince a creative integration of interdisciplinary methodologies, historical perspectives, contemporary case studies or a combination thereof.
3. Discussion papers and design-based/graphic proposals must reflect previously unpublished and original research that is not the property of an existing organization or academic institution. Course or studio assignments cannot be accepted.

Guidelines for Submission

Graduate and doctoral students, emerging practitioners and theorists are invited to submit abstracts by November 1, 2010.

Abstracts for discussion papers (limited to 300 words) should be accompanied by a curriculum vitae and one sample of expository writing (limited to 1500 words). Excerpts are allowed. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes.

Design-based/graphic provocations in embryo, illustrated in a single-page PDF (of no more than 1 megabyte) should be accompanied by a brief rationale (limited to 250 words) summarizing the importance of the work and its relevance to the call, a curriculum vitae, one example of design-based work in a PDF, and a brief synopsis (limited to 250 words) describing the previous work.

All submissions should contain the applicant’s name, professional affiliation (students’ level and status should be indicated), and the title of the paper or proposal.

Submissions will be accepted at office@work-books.org.

Selected presenters will be notified by November 30, 2010.

Some funding is available for participants; however, presenters are responsible for travel and accommodation costs.

Location

Gathering a series of international thinkers and practitioners from a range of fields in Toronto, Ontario, for a one-day public event, this workshop will take place at OCAD University on February, 12, 2011.

A complete list of invited speakers will be announced shortly.

Publication of Proceedings

A selection of the discussion papers, design-based/graphic proposals, and event proceedings will become the basis for a forthcoming publication by Work Books, a nonprofit publisher of design research and discourse based in Cambridge, MA. Inability to attend the event does not preclude inclusion in the publication.

Previous Work Books publications include Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (Work Books/The MIT Press, 2010), which showcases a range of critical texts and conversations between emerging and established scholars and practitioners about projective architectural practice. Architecture Is All Over is intended as the next publication in this series. Work Books publications are edited by Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter.

www.work-books.org