CURRENT CALLS FOR PAPER AND DESIGN WORK
JAE 66:2 Architecture and Utopia, c. 2016
Submission deadline for manuscripts: 1 August 2012
Theme editors
Christina Contandriopoulos, McGill University, Christina.contandriopoulos@mail.mcgill.ca
Ellen Grimes, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, eeditor@acsa-arch.org
Utopia is a concept in constant tension and transformation. Derived from the Greek words for ‘no-place’ (ou-topos) and ‘good-place’ (eu-topos), the British philosopher Thomas More invented the term in 1516 to describe an imaginary island. Now almost 500 years separate us from More’s utopia, but this ambiguous genre endures as a realm of experimentation for historians, theorists, philosophers, and architects.
Architects who deal with utopia contend directly with the ideological forces of politics, technology, and economics. Utopian speculations have thus catalysed architectural discourse and design throughout modernity. But in the late 1970s, leading theorists like Jameson, Jencks, and Tafuri declared the death of modernity and the end of utopia. In the decades that followed, utopia was banished from architectural culture, tabooed.
However, since the turn of the millennium, utopian ideas seem to be flourishing once again, and a significant wave of new visionary projects -- artificial islands, mountain skyscrapers, urban farms, eco tourist resorts, waste and energy treatment plants, inhabited ruins, off-grid infrastructures, self regulated virtual realities, and entirely new cities – are engaging the issues of our time with a speculative force that seeks to reinvent our lives and environments.
Hinting at the future, utopias radicalize the hopes and anxieties that characterize our relation to the world. As such, they tell us a great deal about our present and about ourselves. Is the contemporary interest in visionary architecture a utopian project? What are the utopias of the 21st century? What are the histories and theories of these utopias? Do they differ from the utopian projects of other eras? Are contemporary utopian impulses critical, or projective, or business as usual? Do utopian projects operate as representations, realities, or by some other means? What roles do technology, aesthetics, and politics play in current efforts to renew utopian ideas?
The journal invites submissions that address a broad range of issues related to utopias and architecture. We welcome work on e-topias, eco-topias, waste-topias, micro-topias, dystopias, pragmatic utopias, faux-topias, tech-topias, queer-topias, diagramatic utopias, anti-anti-utopias, failed utopias, and utopian realism. The submission deadline for all manuscripts for this theme issue is August 1st, 2012, 5 pm US Eastern Time Zone. Accepted articles will be published in JAE 66:2, March 2013.
For author instructions, please go to the "Submit to the JAE" page.