Call for Abstracts: ArchiDOCT, n. 18 – Temporalities

Docomomo International is pleased to share that the call for abstracts for the 18th issue of ArchiDOCT , focused on the topic Temporalities, is now open until 1st March 2022.

“The 18th issue of ArchiDOCT welcomes papers that explore the theme of ‘temporality’ in architecture and the built environment from a theoretical or an applied standpoint. We are interested in the variety of approaches, insights, and opportunities for research that arise from considering time in its heterogeneous dimensions and manifestations (time as speed, rhythm, sequence, horizon, …).

In recent decades, the conceptualization and analysis of time has moved beyond Newtonian, linear, and objectivist approaches. The move toward “subjective temporal assumptions” (such as orientation towards past, present, and future, synchronicity, temporal depth, polychronicity, simultaneity) can have an impact on shaping strategic action within the field of architecture and design. Furthermore, new media and tools have opened new questions regarding the cognitive, perceptual, and ontological dimensions of time while disclosing a new set of different ‘temporalities’ that coexist and interfere with each other.

We invite papers that approach time in its entanglements with fiction, memory, embodiment, and potentiality. Fiction and story-telling, for instance, can be used as a tool to motivate organizational change and to reimagine the future by extrapolating possible futures from a radically diverse reading of the past. And memory, seen not only as narrative but also as material, can recast the study and modification of material artifacts as catalysts for the reinterpretation of past-present concerns to inspire future meaningful actions. By refocusing the discussion about architecture on issues of temporality, one inevitably brings into question the concepts of permanence and experience, movement and duration and ultimately change. A focus on a temporal understanding of architecture and all design-related issues is after all a focus on difference: change becomes a key factor where ‘things’ are maybe better understood in terms of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’.

Within these premises, the 18th issue of ArchiDOCT invites academics, early career researchers, and PhD students (writing as single authors, with their supervisor(s) or with fellow doctoral students or doctoral holders), to submit articles that deepen our understanding of the possible relations between architecture, design and temporality. The objective is to define a new epistemological horizon for architecture while at the same time exploring the range of temporality’s theorization and the scope of its possible implementation.

We welcome investigations on the theme of ‘temporalities’ – and time – in design processes and discussions through both a theoretical and practice-based approach to highlight the breadth and scope of the speculations of their possible implementation can bring about. For this reason, and considering the range of possibilities contained in the topic itself, we are interested in contributions that approach the theme with a variety of methods and time-based procedures. We invite discussions concerning conceptual and methodological papers touching upon tangible examples of temporalities either in applied design strategies or for research purposes. The main aim is to investigate the importance of temporal-related phenomena through ideas and lateral perspective s that could enlighten different conceptions related to temporal structures, norms, and assumptions and their inner dichotomies (linearity vs. simultaneity; diachronicity vs. asynchronicity; cognitive vs. experiential).”

Relevant subthemes include:

  • The concept of temporality in architecture and design;
  • Contemporary theories of time;
  • Impact of time-related approaches within contemporary design processes;
  • Mediated practices developed by IT on the concepts of time and temporalities;
  • Data analysis in relation to time;
  • Critical contributions concerning ‘time’ and ‘temporality’ and the eventual liminal zone where they collide and merge;
  • Temporal-related phenomena in contemporary design practices;
  • Narratives of ‘temporality’ in architecture and urban environment;
  • Ontologies of time and space-time.

More information and guidelines on the ArchiDOT website.