Open call: ForA on the Urban

Towards the launch of issue #0 forA on the Urban Journal, the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna / Die Angewandte is seeking contributions that reflect the following declared aims and approaches:

The call addresses individuals and groups, academics, practitioners and students who work in the spatial disciplines. It is open—but not limited to—architects, urbanists, artists and scientists, as much as it is to scholars from the humanities who investigate the present and (possible) future of urban processes, conditions and challenges through theoretical, practical and artistic reflection.

We welcome all types of contributions, ranging from academic traditions to emerging approaches that emphasize a multiplicity of formats, from the traditional essay and scholarly article to discursive, documentary, cartographic, photographic and cinematic investigations.

‍Abstract submissions shall be directed at three main areas of approaches: Entangled Spatial Qualities / Processes of Dialogue and Collaboration / Challenging Methods of Articulation. From the submissions, 12 entries across all these areas of approaches will be selected by the editors for further development. Full entries will be peer reviewed and feedback and recommendations will be provided for either publishing in issue #0 of the journal or publishing in the framework of the discursive online platform.

‍Entangled spatial qualities ‍
‍The journal addresses investigations that put an emphasis on exploring phenomena of the entangled qualities of the natural, artificial, lived and built environment, as much as that of social formations. We are particularly interested in radical shifts in perspective in both temporal and spatial scales that move beyond established concepts and assumed models of reality. Accordingly, this section aims at questions that evolve around new understandings of known problematics as much as the identification of spaces and situations that are yet to be declared as terrain for architectural thought.

‍Processes of dialogue and collaboration
‍‍The journal—as it is embedded in its title—will emphasize the notion of the fora in all their diverse potentialities. We are interested in dialogical, collaborative and experimental approaches that may be manifested in the form of processual contributions by authors from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. These may be conversations, reflections and provocations on the urban, in dialogue with or from within fields such as anthropology, technological and cultural studies, visual culture, ecology, geo-humanities and sociology, and from places and regions that are geographically and culturally underrepresented in urban discourse.

‍Challenging the methods ‍‍
The journal will place special emphasis on contributions that present new approaches and methodologies for inquiry, identification, description, analysis, intervention and theorisation of different urban realities. We are interested in gathering and presenting relevant essays that contribute to innovations in tools and methods that also imply a projective character, making possible a renewed and non-linear relation with the temporal dimension of the urban. We are interested as well in those investigations that pay attention to innovative formats of research, transformation and understanding, integrating them from early stages.

Specification of abstracts
‍‍Abstracts should have a length of 400 words and a maximum of two images, and include the affiliation/incorporation of disciplinary fields, a declaration of its area of investigation, and the envisioned format of the later full contribution. Images should be separate from the Word document and no larger than 5MB each. 

Specification of full contributions
‍‍Emphasizing the open format essay, full contributions can follow a literary or non-literary path:
Scholarly contributions must have a length of between 1500–2500 words (excluding captions, footnotes and references)
Non-scholarly contributions must be accompanied by a text no longer than 800 words (excluding captions, footnotes and references). 

January 8, 2021: Submission of abstracts: 400 words + max 2 images
January 18, 2021: Notification from editors of acceptance/rejection
March 1, 2021: Submissions of full essays
March 31, 2021: Receival of feedback from peer reviewers
April 19, 2021: Submissions of final essays