Past IASTE conferences have called on scholars to consider tradition’s relationship to development, utopia, and most recently, myth. In response, scholars have advanced multiple perspectives regarding the construction of traditions in space and place. These discussions necessarily involve the dimension of time. Utopia implies the construction of a future ideal, whether religious or philosophical, while myth attempts to discover the origins of history, whether in the imagination or in reality. While myth usually invokes an invented past and utopia imagines an alternative future, the dimension of time is paramount. Thus, traditions are revealed never to be the static legacy of the past, but rather a project for its dynamic reinterpretation in the service of the present and the future. To understand how traditions are tied to notions of time and space, it is thus important to consider their subjectivity, authorship, and power. Behind the construction or deconstruction of any tradition also lies the subject, whose interests in the present are often hidden. To reveal this process of agency, one may ask: tradition, by whom?

In examining themes of authorship and subjectivity, this conference will seek to uncover in what manner, for what reason, by whom, to what effect, and during what intervals traditions have been deployed with regard to the built environment. Our current period of globalization has led to the flexible reinterpretation of traditions via the mass media for reasons of power and profit. A proliferation of environments, for example, adopt traditional forms of one place and period in a completely different contextual setting, while new design traditions may privilege image over experience. At the same time, the advent of new mobile technologies with the power to compress and distort traditional configurations of space and time has allowed for the flourishing of new, empowering practices. Such practices have led to new traditions of urban resistance and uprisings that travel fluidly between such diverse locales as Sao Paolo and Istanbul, Madrid and Cairo, and give voice to certain populations previously excluded. Questions of power, the other, and changing configurations of time and space will open up discussions of the ways in which traditional practices shape the histories and futures of built environments.

As in past IASTE conferences, scholars and practitioners from architecture, architectural history, art history, anthropology, archeology, folklore, geography, history, planning, sociology, urban studies, and related disciplines are invited to submit papers that address one of the following tracks:

Track I. WHO: Power and the Construction of Traditions

Questioning ownership and authority of dominant traditions deployed in the making of space is an essential first step. The historical development of any tradition displays patterns of selection that either negate or celebrate certain forms and practices. Which narratives become privileged in spatial practices and to what end? What are the politics of ‘choosing’ traditions, manufacturing or creating them? Further, what is omitted, negated, or silenced in the interest of those in power at any moment? Thus, to understand the transmission of traditions between generations, it is essential to examine linkages between tradition, authority, and power. Papers in this track should address traditions that are ‘produced’ and transmitted or deployed across time and place. Papers should consider spaces and practices that have been created, adopted, or invoked by certain social groups and/or governments for specific purposes.

Track II. WHAT: Place and the Anchoring of Traditions

In order to examine how traditions are manifest in space and time, it is important to consider which versions, particularities, or specificities of tradition emerge and are subsequently anchored in specific places. Understanding where traditions are established in built form and practice is equally as important as understanding whose traditions are privileged. For example, Southeast Asia and other parts of the world are witnessing a revival of urban agriculture which will no doubt influence the future urban form of our cities. How can new settlements incorporate the demands of food security and urban agriculture within their complex infrastructure and eco-systems? In Track II, papers should actively explore hegemonic spatial practices and their alternatives that either adopt or challenge and contest standard configurations of power and authority. For example, how have disadvantaged groups left out of dominant spatial traditions created their own traditions? How are such these spatial practices transmitted? And how do they subvert established norms, allowing new voices to enter and gain legitimacy? Papers in this track should explore how traditions are anchored in place.

Track III. WHERE: Mobility and the Reimagination of Traditions

In a rapidly changing postglobal world, traditions cease to be fixed or attached to given places for very long. The mobile nature of contemporary traditions can negate past forms of ownership and authorship that assumed a top-down power structure that privileged an elite. The celebrations and ways of one culture may be popularized through adoption by others. In many cases, this results in commodification and a loss of original referents. In others, a tradition common to neighboring geographies and communities may be strategically claimed by a distinct subaltern or minority group for political purposes. Technologies of reproducibility, such as photography, radio, film, TV, and advertising, have undermined the placed-based nature of traditions, allowing flexible interpretations as well as the creation of new meanings. In fact, the mass media have created their own traditions. The advent of the internet and wireless media has further facilitated new interpretations of traditions, with flexible temporalities and places. Papers in this track should consider the emergence and establishment of new mobile traditions and their possibility for both disruption and foreclosure.