Home Cultures is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the critical understanding of the domestic sphere, its artifacts, spaces and relations, across timeframes and cultures. ‘Home’ is a highly fluid and contested site of human existence that reflects and reifies identities and values.

In this context Home Cultures explores the relationship between body and building, consumption, material culture, the meaning of home, moving cultures and social consequences of planning and architecture.

“Innovative and exciting, every issue of Home Cultures offers surprising insights … Standing out from the spate of interdisciplinary journals, it is at the center of the new terrains which are replacing the old divisions between humanities and social sciences.” Richard Wilk, Indiana University, USA

“What makes Home Cultures such an exciting journal is the ways in which it has created an arena where very different research traditions meet. The result is a very stimulating mix of ideas, perspectives and styles of writing.” Orvar Löfgren, University of Lund, Sweden

Edited by

Victor Buchli, University College London, UK
Alison Clarke, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
Setha Low, City University of New York, USA

Print ISSN: 1740-6315
Online ISSN: 1751-7427

Frequency: 3 times per year

Writing /drawing: negotiating the perils and pleasures of interiority

50 word abstract and image if appropriate due by 10 February 2012.

The forthcoming issue of the IDEA Journal calls for contributions in the form scholarly essays, visual essays and theorized creative practice on the topic of Writing /Drawing: negotiating the perils and pleasures of interiority.

Provocation

Interiority is subject to specific sorts of disciplinary representation and the premise for this provocation is that images of interiority are frequently at odds with, or resistant to conventional representational systems. Interiority is attached to socially and culturally selected manifestations of power, gender, labour and materiality and these everyday conditions emerge in images of interiority, drawn or written, amplifying and disquieting usual disciplinary concerns.

Three sketched examples:
One
In an architectural journal is a description of a house in Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas, as recounted by Susana Ventura on a visit to the house where she follows Guadalupe who is the housekeeper:
“I follow Guadalupe back and forth. She zigzags up the ramp of the patio. She says this is the best way not to be tired at the end. … Off goes Guadalupe with the vacuum cleaner in hand, vacuuming everything she encounters. First, the kitchen. She displaces the movable furniture below the kitchen bench, vacuums the drawers, the countless bottles, the ceiling, the door … She shakes the carpet on the patio, puts it back in place. Then on to the top floor, where she vacuums Marie’s bathroom and bedroom, the elevator platform, every single corner she can find.”
The architectural interior is revealed through a reporting of movement and a slow material engagement with surface, writing into the interior an everyday attentiveness and neglect, constructing interiority as both abject, with the stuffy persistence of unwanted patina (shedding skin and the adherence of soot), and as a form of worship, gilded with polish. The interior is constructed through writing in terms of its occupation and maintenance with language that is both personal and detached.

Two
A black and white line drawing of an interior set up by a vertical section perspective of House and Atelier Bow-Wow by Atelier Bow-Wow, described by Irene Cheng as a parody of a technical drawing incorporating “many elements normally excluded from construction documents, such as perspectival depth; silhouettes of human figures engaged in prosaic activities like eating, brushing teeth, gardening, and sleeping; props like slippers, stuffed animals; house plants, and shag rugs; outlines of the views seen through windows; and the obsessive rendering of textures like those of wood surfaces.”
A drawing that shifts the nature of the technical interior, the dimensioned, constructed and abstract set of building information, into an inhabited, furnished narrative of daily life. The daily life is however artificial; the people are ghosts and the stories told by the furnishings are improbably clean; there is no colour.

Three
A black and white photograph taken in the early years of the twentieth century by Alfred James Tattersall shows the interior of a Samoan fale with two women lying supposedly asleep on mats in the middle of the empty space. Titled, “Interior of Native House”, the image might be seen as the ubiquitous collector’s assemblage with wooden headrests in view and the women contained by the borders of their mats. The photographic focus, however, is sharpest as it traces the framing and woven materiality of the fale, recording the precision of the bindings that connect structure, while the gentle breath of the women, in the long exposure, very slightly blurs the image and resists their capture.

This provocation seeks papers that address the complications and felicities of representing all forms of interiority (domestic, work spaces, institutional or public spaces) from technical, theoretical, programmatic or cultural perspectives. It seeks to attract discussions on representations of the interior constructed with writing, drawing (analogue or digital), installation, performance, photography, film or building.

Download the CfP and the Registration Form

THE IDEA JOURNAL ACCEPTS:
DESIGN RESEARCH PAPERS
that demonstrate development and engagement with interior design/interior architecture history, theory, education and practice through critique and synthesis. The focus is on the documentation and critical review of both speculative research and practice-based research

REFEREED STUDIOS
that represent the nature and outcomes of refereed design studios which have either been previously peer reviewed in situ and/or critically discussed through text and imagery for the IDEA JOURNAL.

PROJECT REVIEWS
that critically evaluate design-based works which seek to expand the nature of spatial and theoretical practice in interior design/interior architecture and associated disciplines.

VISUAL ESSAYS
that demonstrate critical, pictorial responses to design conditions.

FOR BOOK REVIEWS
to encourage debate into the emerging literature dedicated to the expression and expansion of the theory and practice of interior design/interior architecture.

REGISTRATION OF INTEREST:
Authors are invited to register their interest in submitting a paper on the form following and forward by email to the Executive Editor, Rachel Carley by 10 February 2012. Registration of interest is not refereed. The acknowledgement of registration facilitates development of proposal to full research paper, refereed studio or project review by providing formatting guidelines and publication standards to registrants.

Email: rcarley@unitec.ac.nz

IMPORTANT DEADLINES/DATES:

Call for contributions: 1 December 2011
Registration of interest including 50 word abstract and image if appropriate due by 10 February 2012
Acknowledgement by 19 February 2012
Submit full draft for review by 16 July 2012
Peer-review – August-September 2012
Notification by 5 November 2012
Revisions returned by 30 November 2012
Journal published early 2013 with 2012 date

GUEST EDITOR: The guest editor for the 2012 IDEA Journal is Dr Sarah Treadwell. Sarah is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland. Her research investigates the representation of architecture in colonial and contemporary images. Motels, gender and volcanic conditions of ground are also subjects of interest. Sarah has published in various books and journals including Architectural Design, Space and Culture and Architectural Theory Review.

The IDEA JOURNAL is published by IDEA (Interior Design / Interior Architecture Educators Association)
ACN 135 337 236
www.idea-edu.com

Purloined Letters. An International Journal of Quotation Studies is a peer-reviewed, biannual scientific journal which addresses the fields of literature, art, cinema, history and the humanities. With its focus on the theory and practice of quotation, the journal has an essentially interdisciplinary approach, publishing articles on the textual re-use of verbal, visual and musical materials, and specifically the appropriation of fragments and their re-insertion into a different context, from classicism to postmodern rewritings. Prospective contributors may consider the question of quotation both in theoretical and interpretative/historical perspectives .

Contributions can be written either in French, English, Italian, Dutch, Spanish or German. There are three different kinds of contributions: articles up to approximately 40000 characters (including spaces), articles up to approximately 20000 characters (including spaces) and reviews up to approximately 8000 characters (including spaces).

http://www.parolerubate.unipr.it

Critical reviews: buildings and projects – new series of articles

Over the next year The Journal of Architecture wishes to launch a new series of articles examining buildings and projects from the 1980s. In order to realise this series as a platform for original research from practitioners and academics, the editors invite contributions in the form of abstracts examining buildings and unrealised projects from around the world. The abstracts of 500 words sought in the first stage should give an indication of the perspective or the range of angles from which the chosen building or project is approached and of the argument proposed in the article.

Abstracts should be submitted to Christoph Grafe, the editor of the Critical Review series before 30 November 2011: c.grafe@tudelft.nl

In their definitive form the essays should be substantial critical reviews of 5000 words or more, and include illustrative material such as plans, sections and period photographs. The editors of The Journal of Architecture will select up to six articles from the submitted abstracts, which will appear during the first year of the series, starting in 2012.

Both the abstracts and the definitive essays will be subjected to the usual rigorous peer-reviewing procedure of The Journal. It is also intended that a newly created The Journal of Architecture Critical Review Prize will be awarded annually for the best article published in this series.
It is the explicit objective of this series to encourage practitioners to contribute newly written critical discussions of buildings and paper projects.With the support of the RIBA’s Research Trust Award, the Journal of Architecture can offer those applicants who have no substantial affiliation with an academic institution a contribution of up to £ 250 for expenses incurred in doing necessary research.

Context
Over the past three decades theory and practice in architecture have shown an increasing tendency towards specialisation. As construction projects grow in scale and complexity, it seems to become more and more difficult to examine buildings as cultural statements rather than as isolated icons or technological achievements. Architectural practice is gripped by an intensifying pressure to serve economic requirements and architecture’s role in the market-driven production of images. The need for sustainable building concepts is often taken as a pretext for understanding architecture as a form of problem solving by means of technology. On the other hand scholars and writers find themselves under increasing pressure to develop into experts in particular corners of the academic debate. The gulf between academic writing and practice has had a taxing, even crippling effect on architectural thinking, as it often obscures the view of the buildings or urban compositions, which in their realized or imagined states form the disciplinary core of architecture.

The gap between theory and practice is one of the starting points for a new series of articles in the Journal of Architecture. The title Critical reviews: buildings and projects expresses the objective of this series to examine not merely the objects of design activities, but also the function of architectural criticism as a way of understanding how buildings come into existence and how their design is informed by cultural and physical contexts on the one hand and the internal dynamics of the process of design and construction on the other. Buildings are not illustrations of theory, yet they invite examinations of the various strands of thought that are useful in understanding their genesis or their effect (or both). As Alan Colquhoun wrote: ‘Criticism occupies the no-mans-land between enthusiasm and doubt, between poetic sympathy and analysis. Its purpose is not, except in rare cases, either to eulogise or condemn, and it can never grasp the essence of the work it discusses. It must try to get behind the work’s apparent originality and expose its ideological framework without turning it into a mere tautology.’ (Alan Colquhoun, ‘From Bricolage to Myth’, Oppositions 12, Spring, 1978). In inviting writers both from academia and architectural practice we hope to offer a platform for re-cultivating some of the traditions of architectural criticism that have all but disappeared, and to encourage the reinstitution of the great tradition of the essay as a form of studying and analysing architecture.

Architectures after 1980: presences of the past
We propose to start the new series with a call for abstracts for critical reviews of buildings and projects examining the architecture of the 1980s and the interest in historical reference and urban form. The agenda for the intense study of the ‘European city’ was encapsulated in ‘La presenza del passato’, the title of the exhibition at the 1980 Venice Biennale curated by Paolo Portoghesi. It arguably found its conclusion a decade later as Francis Fukuyama announced the end of history, even if notions of an architecture inspired by the past continued to have an effect, for example in the reconstruction debates in Berlin in the following decade.

In contrast to the first three post World War II decades, which have attracted extensive academic research, the 1980s pose an intriguing challenge, as the period is still a twilight zone: not quite history, but at the same time remote from current preoccupations and practices. Focussing on this period has only recently become a field of study for academics and architects. Meanwhile the use of historic references, which offended critics defending the legacy of the modern movement in the 1980s, has largely lost its explosive character as ‘Postmodernism’ itself has become a faint memory or, depending on one’s point of view, an aberration. The subsequent international success of British High-Tech, the rhetorically-charged borrowings from the International Style (as proposed by OMA) or variations on the theme of a ‘new simplicity’ in the Swiss manner have eclipsed the preoccupation of the 1980s with European urban forms.

The selection of this period is not a post-mortem rehabilitation of what at the time was labelled postmodern architecture. Rather it should be a reassessment of a set of themes – the rediscovery of the ‘European city’, architectural traditions, images and fictions, the notion of contextuality – which were widely discussed in the early 1980s and which have since become part of planning policies, but seem also to have been lost in the preoccupation with isolated architectural icons in the 1990s and the early twenty-first century.

Issue #5 Call for papers – closes on 30 June 2012
Guest Editor: Suzie Attiwill

craft+design enquiry is pleased to announce a new call for papers for the fifth issue of the journal to be published in 2013.
http://www.craftaustralia.org.au/cde/index.php/cde/announcement/view/6

On 12 March 1913, a naming ceremony took place in an empty paddock on a hill. This rural environment was to become a city, the capital city of Australia, the city of Canberra. The aspirations and the projections of the Griffins’ winning design for Canberra are an example of a world-in-making involving the practices of design and craft. This issue of craft+design enquiry will be published in 2013 – 100 years after this event and when, for the first time in history, more than half the world’s population live in cities. By 2030, this will increase to at least 60% with significant growth happening in cities of developing countries and the emergence of meta-cities with 20 million inhabitants. ‘The twenty-first century will be known as the century of the city’ (Tibaijuka, 2010).

This next issue of craft+design enquiry will focus on and highlight the role, contribution and potential of craft and design practices to the urban environment as well as the transformation of these practices – a world in making.

download the call

‘The thing is what we make of the world. … Things are our way of dealing with a world in which we are enmeshed rather than over which we have dominion. … It is our way of dealing with the plethora of sensations, vibrations, movements, and intensities that constitute both our world and ourselves’ … ‘We make objects in order to live in the world’ (Grosz, 2009, pp. 126 & 128).

Situated in a journal published by Craft Australia, the nuances of craft – a practice which values making and materiality – will guide the selection of papers for publication. This emphasis on craft does not exclude design so much as bring focus to practices of design which engage ideas of making and materiality, where there is a sense of a hand(s) in making, a valuing of haptic encounters and an attention to the relation between people and surroundings. From small to large scale projects, from individuals to communities, an intimate approach to the question of how people inhabit and transform the urban environment is invoked. What are the potentials in this century of the city for craft and design practices? What is the contribution of craft and design to cities and liveability? What might a craft sensibility bring to urban inhabitation? What of an expanded idea of craft practice as a way of working and thinking which addresses spatial and temporal urban conditions? What of the emergence of new forms of practices to engage in the condition of the urban environment and the social, political and cultural forces of the twenty-first century?

Academics, practitioners, research students and others are invited to submit research papers and critical project works. A definition of research as ‘the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings’ (Australian Research Council, 2011) is reiterated here to highlight the criticality of ‘new and creative’ in relation to research and to encourage the submission of research through craft and design practice, as well as about craft and design practices situated in a world in making – ‘the century of the city’. Authors are also encouraged to consider the inclusion of visual material as research.

THE CDE#5 CALL FOR PAPERS CLOSES ON 30 JUNE 2012.

This issue of craft+design enquiry will be published in mid-2013.

To submit a paper please register online at http://www.craftaustralia.org.au/cde/index.php/cde/announcement/view/6 by the closing date of 30 June 2012.

Refer to author guidelines for further information.

For inquiries relating to this issue or submission of papers, please contact the Guest Editor, Suzie Attiwill (suzie.attiwill@rmit.edu.au).
Administrative enquiries, please contact Jenny Deves, Managing Editor craft+design enquiry (jenny.deves@craftaustralia.org.au).

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS OF GUEST EDITOR:

Suzie Attiwill is Associate Professor and Program Director, Interior Design, RMIT School of Architecture and Design. Suzie has an independent practice involving the design of exhibitions, curatorial work, writing and working on a range of interdisciplinary projects in Australia and overseas.
Publications include: ‘Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist’ Urban Interior. Informal explorations, interventions and occupations. Germany: Spurbuchverlag, 2011; ‘Spatial Relations’ in Making Space: artist run initiatives in Victoria Australia: VIA-N, 2007; co-editor with Gini Lee, ‘INSIDEOUT’ IDEA Journal 2005, Brisbane: QUT Press, 2005.
From 1996 to 1999, she was the inaugural Artistic Director of Craft Victoria and editor of Craft. Suzie is the current chair of IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association), a founding member of the Urban Interior research group and a professional member of the Design Institute of Australia.

REFERENCES:

Australian Research Council, March 2011. http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/2011_presentations/decra0311.pdf. [Accessed 13 April 2011].

Grosz, E., 2009. ‘The Thing’. In F. Candlin & R. Guins, eds. The Object Reader. London & New York: Routledge.

Tibaijuka, A.K., 2010. Inaugural Address UN Pavilion Lecture Series, Shanghai World Expo 2010 – Better Cities, Better Life. Tibaijuka was then Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, the United Nations agency for human settlements. http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?cid=8273&catid=560&typeid=8&subMenuId=0 [Accessed April 24 2011].

Academics, research students and practitioners are invited to submit design research papers and critical project works that engage with interior design/interior architecture theory and practice for the IDEA JOURNAL 2011.

Guest Editor: JULIEANNA PRESTON

Registration of interest including 50 word abstract and image if appropriate due by 30 June 2011.

PROVOCATION:
Originally identifying the household or family as the basic unit of society, the term “economy” implicates the social and material relations of a prominent type of interior, the domestic sphere. The notion of economy has expanded in contemporary usage to denote systems of production, distribution, exchange and consumption at a global scale. In much of today’s world, to be economical is to make the efficient use of resources, even to the extent of frugality. And yet, in sharp contrast and with immediate relevance, “economy” conceptually refers to a face to face relational exchange, an active sharing and social interaction which has the capacity to occur in interiors other than those inscribed by physical enclosure or geographical locale.

download the Call

The forthcoming issue of The IDEA Journal calls for contributions in the form scholarly essays, visual essays and theorized creative practice on the topic of Interior Economies. The following questions serve as provocations:

What forms of interior environments emerge in response to twenty-first century economies to support new gender, ethnic and ethical relations?

If considered as sites of exchange, production and distribution, how might domestic, industrial, commercial, virtual, temporal and liminal interiors be re-imagined?

What is the value of efficiency within interior design? What kinds of practice expand and/or challenge the tendency for efficiency as cost-effectiveness?

Economy’s thrifty, frugal and practical sensibility could suggest certain vestiges of modernism’s hold on interior aesthetics and its supposed abolition of ornament and decoration. How does this identity lead one to reconsider concepts of materiality and immateriality in interiors?

The interface of interior and economy warrants mention of the financial encumbrance of sourcing materials, fixtures, furniture and finishes. What relation do these finishes and props of inhabitation have with global networks, politics and/or sustainable preservation?

THE IDEA JOURNAL ACCEPTS:

DESIGN RESEARCH PAPERS that demonstrate development and engagement with interior design/interior architecture history, theory, education and practice through critique and synthesis. The focus is on the documentation and critical review of both speculative research and practice-based research

REFEREED STUDIOS that represent the nature and outcomes of refereed design studios which have either been previously peer reviewed in situ and/or critically discussed through text and imagery for the IDEA JOURNAL.

PROJECT REVIEWS that critically evaluate design-based works which seek to expand the nature of spatial and theoretical practice in interior design/interior architecture and associated disciplines.

PROPOSALS FOR BOOK REVIEWS to encourage debate into the emerging literature dedicated to the expression and expansion of the theory and practice of interior design/interior architecture

REGISTRATION OF INTEREST: Authors are invited to register their interest in submitting a paper on the form following and forward by email to the Executive Editor, Gini Lee by June 30 2011. Registration of interest is not refereed. The Acknowledgement of Registration facilitates development of proposal to full research paper, refereed studio or project review by providing formatting guidelines and publication standards to registrants.

Email: gini.lee@qut.edu.au

IMPORTANT DEADLINES/DATES:

Call for contributions: May 2011

Registration of interest including 50 word abstract and image if appropriate due by 30 June 2011

Acknowledgement by 8 July 2011

Submit full draft for review by September 10 2011

Peer-review September/October 2011

Notification late October 2011

Revisions returned by end November 2011

Full and final contributions due by mid December 2011

Journal published early 2012 with 2011 date

GUEST EDITOR:

The guest editor for the 2011 IDEA Journal is Julieanna Preston, Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies, Institute of Design for Industry and Environment, College of Creative Arts, Massey University. Julieanna is a spatial/ interior designer recognised internationally for her transdisciplinary creative practice research on the politics of interior environments and material surfaces. This work draws on her knowledge of building construction, geology, architecture, landscape, installation art, exhibition design, literature, feminist theory, philosophy and practice-led research. In her research she navigates between theoretical inquiry and material invention explored through sculptural objects, performative installations, visual images and scholarly-based publications. These works disclose an affirmative feminist agency applied to every day interior space and furnishings previously established in “Pinned Structure and Folded Surface: Sewing Operations on the Eiffel Tower” (RISD 2002, Surface Consciousness/ AD 2003, Architectural Design Research 2005) and “Moments of Resistance” (Archadia Press 2002). In recent years this speculative research has advanced knowledge on material vitality and gendered space in the context of curated exhibitions such as BLAZE, No Fixed Seating, SHEAR: SWELL and 13%: This is my feminist survival kit. Her design-writing practice includes two edited books, “INTIMUS: Interior Design Theory Reader” (2006 with Mark Taylor) and “Interior Atmospheres” which curate new and existing texts to reconceptualise interior design within multidisciplinary discourse. Both volumes have been credited as leading influences to interior design’s emerging identity. Forthcoming works include her creative practice contextualized in visual essays “Lining Stories: Conversations with Inside Trades” (Fairchild, 2012), “Neutral, Not So” (Berg, 2012), “Blazing Inter-alia” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) and “Live Matter” (Berg, 2012).

Proposals 250 words June 17, 2011

The subject of Volume 03 is the practice of adaptive reuse in emerging economies. Volume 03 aims to shed light on the characteristics of today’s different emergent world markets as they impact issues of energy, historical memory and the reuse of existing structures, infrastructure and cities.

Defined as “transforming an unused or underused building into one that serves a new use,” the practice of adaptive reuse is enjoying general acceptance and renewed vigor in many parts of the industrialized world due to the urgent need to conserve our natural resources and to minimize the negative impact of building upon the environment. The introduction of this practice to nations currently experiencing rapid growth and industrialization raises new and different issues regarding adaptive reuse. Volume 03 aims to explore these issues, particular to today’s emergent world economies*, as they relate to existing structures, infrastructures and cities.

We seek proposals of no more than 250 words on investigations of the challenges of adaptive reuse in emerging economies.
Send as RTF document and attach folder with images/captions (10MB max.) intarjournal@risd.edu

download the Call

REQUIREMENTS DUE DATE

Proposals 250 words June 17, 2011

Full Paper 1000-3000 words Aug. 2, 2011

Return by reviewers Sept. 12, 2011 for mark-ups

Revised articles Oct. 12, 2011

About Int|AR

Established in 2009 as the first American academic publication focusing on Design and Adaptive Reuse, the Int|AR Journal and its web presence explore this inherently sustainable practice through multi-faceted investigations and paradigmatic examples.

5 April 2011, h: 10.00
Politecnico di Milano
Spazio mostre, Campus Bovisa
Exhibition opening (the complete work)

12 April 2011, h: 19.00
Triennale Design Museum
Exhibition opening (the Furniture)

29 April 2011, h: 9.30
Triennale di Milano
Salone d’Onore
International Symposium

Download the flyer for details

Publication, in print and online, is a major part of the BGC’s intellectual project. For fifteen years, the BGC has published Studies in the Decorative Arts, an internationally acclaimed journal covering the decorative arts, design history, and material culture. The success of this journal represents the success also of a new institution at catalyzing intellectual conversation. We are planning to substantially re-think Studies in the Decorative Arts after its Fall 2009 issue.

A new journal, West 86^th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, is planned for Fall 2010 and will focus on the wider crossroads where the decorative arts meet design history and material culture. In addition to its print manifestation, this new journal will be published online and will be the starting point for an open-access Web site dedicated to journal-related digital content.

Contact the editors

For more information on West 86^th: A Journal of Decorative arts, Design History, and Material Culture, including guidelines for how to contribute articles, reviews, and translations:

Journal Submissions
38 West 86th Street
New York, New York 10024
Telephone 212.501.3049
Fax 212.501.3092
Editor-in-Chief, Paul Stirton: stirton@bgc.bard.edu
Managing Editor, Stephanie Gorton: gorton@bgc.bard.edu

Publications-West86th

Publishing Wiley-Blackwell