Call for Abstracts for Edited Book Chapters

Book Series: Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementa
Publisher: Edizioni Quasar
Editors: Angela Gigliotti, Chiara Monterumisi, Monica Prencipe

In the last decades, both architectural history and discipline have witnessed a continuous addition of external figures to the canon (Banham 1996) often following Henry-Russel Hitchcock’s “extra-canonical” approach. Rethinking the grand narrative of architecture also needs what Beatriz Colomina defined an “intra-canonical” perspective (Kotsioris 2020): the attempts to dismantle, expose, and even reassemble the structure of the canon and its multifaceted icons. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories, for Christopher B. Steiner canon is a “structure which is in a continuous process of reproducing itself, mediating its identity through market forces, and negating the social conditions of its productions by covering the tracks of its arbitrary and subjective formations” (Steiner 1996).

Starting from such premises, this edited book belonging to the series SUPPLEMENTA aims at confronting the rhetoric(s) on multiple exchanges between Nordic European countries and Southern ones, also beyond their European boundaries including Global South, spanning from traditional methods of architectural research to the more experimental and artistic formats. The reception of these thoughts has been transformed under the pressure of the cultural and socio-economic change. To a closer look, the construction of the aura around both models “North” and “South” derived from: field trips; exchanges between institutions; books and reviews; itinerant exhibitions; involvement of cultural diplomatic propaganda; built interventions assumed as key references till nowadays; and, not least, the establishment of supranational agreements, treaties and privileges, guaranteeing a contamination of ideas and practices, as well as a free circulation of people, capital, goods, knowledge and service.
The purpose is to map across temporal framework the different approaches through specific case studies and comparative investigations within a broader process of decolonization aiming to offer alternatives to dominant stereotypical standpoints.

We invite authors to focus on this cross, mutual and complex contamination that covers a wide time span, from the early 18th century stretching till the recent years. The reception of these thoughts has been transformed under the pressure of the cultural and socio-economic change and inevitably brought to a progressive reconsideration of the two iconic labels of “North” and “South”. To a closer look, the construction of the aura around both models derived from: field trips; exchanges between institutions; books and reviews; itinerant exhibitions; involvement of cultural diplomatic propaganda; built interventions assumed as key references till nowadays; and, not least, the establishment of supranational agreements, treaties and privileges, guaranteeing a contamination of ideas and practices, as well as a free circulation of people, capital, goods, knowledge and service – that has allowed more and more a substantial portion of architectural practices’ turnover generated by export to foreign countries.

The purpose is to map across temporal framework the different approaches through specific case studies and comparative investigations. Of particular interest will be the disentanglement of the building, hybridizing or dismantling of Nordic and Southern models within a broader process of decolonization meant to offer alternatives to dominant stereotypical standpoints. The complexity of a North-South contamination(s) could be channeled into many perspectives, that are here summarised:

Perspective 1 | Post-occupied spaces
Spatial readings: dynamics of cross-cultural design strategies and projects at home and abroad (interior studies, typological studies, sociological studies, urban studies, landscape studies,...);

Perspective 2 | Colophon matters
Authorship readings: voices of forgotten actors – segregated by gender, class-division, labour-division and other factors – who operated across borders, behind the scenes of design process (architects, industrial designers, clients, contractors, builders, site workers, bureaucrats, secretaries, politicians,...);

Perspective 3 | Building cultures
Knowledge readings: contaminations between foreign-imported and local-hosting building networks (materials, techniques, professional organization, codes, guidelines, unions structures,...);

Perspective 4 | Media and Communication
Historiographical readings: dynamics and occasions of international exchanges of knowledges (competitions, expo, conferences, seminars, travels, educational program, cinema, photography, visual arts,...).

The full call for edited book chapter comprising the four analytical perspectives from which address the topics and the book process timeline as well are available at the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Oq9f7zcs2PSXlhnADnk4uvc-N1b891vm/view?usp=sharing

Guidelines for proposals
Authors interested in submitting a book chapter for the book are invited to send, at first, one single proposal (max 10 MB) comprising:
- a chapter abstract (3500 characters), its outline and a title
- one b&w image;
- five keywords;
- author(s) name(s);
- current affiliation and e-mail address;
- a short bio (500 characters);
- list of 3-5 recent publications.

Proposals submission by 26 July 2022
Accepted authors for the second round of submission,will be notified by 15 September 2022

Please send us your proposals to anorthsouthcontaminationgmail.com

If you have any queries or require further information, do not hesitate to contact the editors at the e-mail address of the proposal submission.