Sensing Architecture

A multidisciplinary symposium to be held on 29 March 2014 on the occasion of the major exhibition Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline 16 December 2013

‘A great building … must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable.’ – Louis Kahn

‘When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.’ – Jasper Johns

‘An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal.’ – Marcel Proust

The exhibition Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined (25 January – 6 April 2014) challenges the assumed primacy of the visual in architecture through presenting seven immersive installations designed to resonate with the senses on a variety of levels. This symposium seeks to unpick and develop the ideas, issues, implications and assumptions the exhibition poses.

We ask for papers from a range of fields and disciplines exploring how a consideration of the experience of architecture (broadly understood) can enrich and develop its practice and analysis, as well as its theory and history. How can a space make us feel? What are the nature and mechanics of architectural experience? How can the different registers of ideas – philosophical, psychological, social, and economic – that shape our experience of architecture be reconciled or differentiated, challenged or reinforced? We invite submissions from researches and practitioners, both established or emerging.

Possible topics include, though need not be confined to, the following: 

• The psychology of space, colour and form

• Queer space(s)

• Corporeality and effect on the body of spatial or architectural experience

• The role of gender in spatial experience

• How the concept of ‘experience’ has evolved in the history of ideas

• Analytical methodologies examining responses to certain spaces or types of space

• Function as an influence on sensation

• Episodes or moments in the history of architecture during which the primacy of experience was invoked – for example, spiritual or religious spaces

• Interventions from practitioners (architects, designers or artists) seeking to engage with architectural experience in innovative ways or whose work examines ideas related to the senses

• Artists who seek to enhance or subvert the sensory aspects of a building or space

Please submit an abstract of 250 words plus a one-page CV outlining any institutional affiliation by 16 December 2013. 

We welcome international submissions. Funds may be available to assist with travel and accommodation expenses, though it is expected that those submitting apply to their own institutions for support in the first instance.

Closing date for abstracts: 16 December 2013
Chosen participants notified by: 6 January 2014 

Please email your abstract and CV to [email protected]

> via royal-acad-arts.msgfocus.com