LIMITS
XXIst
annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New
Zealand
Melbourne,
Australia
26–29
September, 2004
Now we
are at home. But home does not preexist: it was necessary to draw a circle
around that uncertain and fragile center, to organize a limited place.
Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari
The
XXIst annual conference of SAHANZ calls for papers addressing the theme of
‘LIMITS’. A limit can be considered a decisive line of demarcation, a threshold
where different conditions meet, or a boundary that may be approached, crossed
or exceeded. Architecture is an art that operates within and responds to key
nominated or historically situated limits and constraints. It is also a
professionally bounded discipline that necessarily interfaces with a range of
other fields of knowledge. Here we are concerned with identifying and
investigating the plurality of different, often competing limits with which the
discipline of architecture contends.
By
identifying and questioning its limits, the discipline of architecture defines
itself historically, theoretically, technically, culturally, and politically.
What are the implications of the limits that have been placed historically on
the role of the architect as artist, technician, thinker, and/or maker? How
might the discipline of architecture reconsider its historical, current, and
future formulations?
Architectural
history, for instance, can be framed through a consideration of the practices
architects have employed to respond to nominated or given limits and
constraints. The status of constraining limits has shifted historically, from
the unavoidable limits of distance and resource in the colonial period, to the
imposed limits of modernism and rationalism. Different approaches to the
constitutive possibilities of the limit as a contemporary concern are offered
by engagement with the minimal as an aesthetic condition, with urban strategies
for responding to situated limits and constraints, and with the supposedly
limitless bounty of emerging technologies.
The
particular geo-political situation of Australia and New Zealand at the edge of
Asia and the Pacific demands the exploration of other kinds of cultural limits
in post-colonial, migrant, indigenous and bi-cultural scholarship. The limit is especially topical at the present socio-political
juncture. It marks the material coastline as an exclusionary border-limit to
refugees and undesirable others. In the emerging post-industrial economy, the
pervasive pressures of global media, capital and culture, cross national
borders and redefine regional relationships.
This
years SAHANZ forum registers the crossing of a culturally significant
threshold. It is our 21st. This offers a timely opportunity for celebration,
critical reflection, and the consideration of future aspirations. The figure of
the limit, with its various allusions to thresholds, constraints, frameworks,
boundaries, borderlines, betweeness, otherness, abjection, interruption,
difference, liminality, the sublime, and so forth, defines the locus of many
potential questions for the discipline of architecture. This conference is
concerned less with these as problems in a negative sense, than with the
affirmative limit, the line in the sand that can be forever redrawn.
Suggested Sub-Themes:
Historical Limits
methods,
objects, and archive of historiography
contested
canons and taxonomies: indigenous; vernacular; local and international
modernism; avant-garde; contemporary
heritage
conservation practice and the limits of its application
Epistemological Limits
discipline
specific practices and precedents
disciplinary
adjacencies: landscape architecture; Interior design; urban design
history
and theory of interdisciplinary movements: art and crafts; modernist synthetic
practices
interdisciplinary
collaborations: research methods, techniques and practices
Ontological Limits
identity
and other architectural histories: antipodean; indigenous; bi-cultural;
sub-cultural; gendered; migrant; itinerant
Socio-Geographical/Cultural/Political Limits
Colonisation;
post-colonisation; migrancy; globalisation; localisation
Technological Limits
(Un)limited
emergence of technological capacities
limitations
of technical determinism
anachronistic
technologies and practices
Representational Limits
history
of representational practices
emerging
representational technologies
representation
and liminality
Urban Limits
urban
density and imposed boundaries
contested
local character/heritage criteria
historically
situated urban limits and constraints
subsumed
historical limits in the contemporary metropolis
Requirements for Abstracts:
Page
One: Contact Details
-Name.
-Institutional
affiliation (not obligatory).
-Postal,
telephonic and electronic addresses (in general conference
correspondence
will be conducted by email).
-Biographic
statement of 40 words or less. Give details of two of your recent publications.
Page
Two: Abstract
In less
than 300 words describe your proposed presentation. Indicate to what extent your
proposal responds to the general theme of the conference or to the suggested
themes listed above.
Submission:
Abstracts are due 12th April, 2004
Submit
your abstract as a Microsoft Word file attached to an email send to:
sahanz04@rmit.edu.au
In the
subject line of the email write:
'ABSTRACT:
your title'
Title
the Word document:
"yourfamilyname_titleword"
Process:
The
abstracts will be blind reviewed by two peers and by the conference committee.
These
are the criteria for acceptance of the abstract:
- Does
the abstract propose an original contribution to the scholarship of its field?
- Does
the author demonstrate knowledge of the literature in this field and show what
the main resources of the paper will be in terms of examples, data or
arguments?
- Does
the abstract show that there are interesting points of arguments, or
justifications of research to be made?
- Is
the abstract well written?
- Does
the abstract address one of the conference themes?
If the
abstract is accepted a full paper is then required and this is also subject to
external review by two peers.
abstracts due: 12th April, 2004
response: Late April, 2004
full papers due: 28th June, 2004
response: Late July, 2004
revised papers due: 23rd August, 2004
Conference Venue:
RMIT School of Architecture + Design
City Campus
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia 3000
For further conference information and updates
refer to the SAHANZ Website:
http://www.sahanz.net
Please refer all enquiries to:
Hélène Frichot
sahanz04@rmit.edu.au
or
Prof. Harriet Edquist
Harriet.Edquist@rmit.edu.au
Conference Convener
SAHANZ 21