Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment
Call for Papers
Deadline: March 4, 2021
This year has brought the foundational relationship between architecture and the environment to the fore in a way that demands both careful assessment and urgent action. While the pandemic precipitated a monumental restructuring of humanity’s spatial and temporal habits in order to mitigate the worst effects of COVID-19, the protests against anti-Black racism that erupted around the world reminded us that white colonialism, and the legacy it has left in our urban and social structures, perpetuate the devastating devaluing of people and places. In the face of our self-made climate crisis, architecture and environment become one, both succumbing to the flames sweeping across western United States, both submerged in the rising seas around Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment was formed in this context. Current aims to place the environment in the foreground of architecture history, recognizing architecture’s ongoing complicity in the destruction of human and natural systems. An open source, academic, publishing platform, Current understands history writing as a reflective practice that enables and advances an active role for architecture history in shaping the future. As such, Current will promote a view of architecture and its history that is critically engaged with equity and ecology.
How does architecture extract from the environment in the production of architectural knowledge? How do the particularities of architecture history shape discussions about the environmental crisis? As a world-making practice, architecture has contributed to the formation of political, ideological, and pedagogical systems that have had a direct impact on the environment. What are the mechanisms through which architecture gained this power?
The editors of Current invite submissions for paper abstracts that engage with these questions, and the co-constitutive nature of architecture and environment more broadly. While Current is focused on histories of the human-made world, essays that are interdisciplinary, speculative, and engage in novel methodological approaches are strongly encouraged. We seek to publish writing from or featuring voices that have been marginalized within architecture histories. Submissions can explore any topic, theme, region, or time-period. We are particularly interested in essays that feature original research and grounded in case studies. Submissions can be long form essays (3000-7000 words), or shorter, exploratory articles (1000-1500 words). Long form essays will be considered through our review process.
Submission guidelines
Abstracts along with a two-page CV should be emailed to current@current-collective.org by March 4, 2021. Proposals selected by the Current Editorial Board will be notified by April 1, 2021. Completed essays should be submitted by August 1, and will be published by the end of 2021. Review and submission guidelines can be found here.
Founding Editors
Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Daniel Barber, Carson Chan
