Architectural Theory Review, vol. 20, no. 2, Special Issue: Corruption, Editor: Adam Jasper

We understand corruption in a broad sense, including bureaucratic corruption, stylistic decadence and the inevitable decay of physical materials.

Corruption goes far beyond stories of crooked developers (although they are worth pursuing). We are interested in all perversions of due process, from the distortions of architectural competitions through to subtle conflicts of interest. As the competing demands of developers, governing bodies and insurers encroach ever further on architecture’s autonomy, pragmatists move from the manipulation of form to the manipulation of institutions, or, to use a formulation by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the architecture of genius becomes the architecture of bureaucracy.

This situation produces its own possibilities for positive response. The Spanish architect Santiago Cirugeda has become famous for manipulating local by-laws as if they were as much part of the parameters of an architectural project as programme or site.

We are interested in the family home as a site of nepotistic struggle, price fixers and conspirators and the subversive prestidigitation of invisible hands. We want to understand enterprise at the margins of the law. Most importantly, we want to understand how practice influences theory, and how theory accommodates to practice.

Corruption is also dedicated to the corruption of taste. From mannerism to the late baroque, from Biedermaier to Edwardianism, certain styles have retrospectively been seen as symptoms of cultural decay. Does the term ‘decadence’ have any validity anymore, and if so, what does it mean?

Finally, we are, of course, interested in corruption in its physical sense. The ageing and decay of materials can be a patina or a tarnish, can connote prestige or decrepitude. What is the trajectory of contemporary decay, and what is the unexploited poesis in redundant materials and techniques?

Architectural Theory Review, founded at the University of Sydney in 1996 and now in its twentieth year, is the pre-eminent journal of architectural theory in the Australasian region. Published by Taylor & Francis in print and online, the journal is an international forum for generating, exchanging, and reflecting on theory in and of architecture. All texts are subject to a rigorous process of blind peer review.

Submission Instructions

• Enquiries about this special issue theme, and possible papers, are welcome, please email the editor, Adam Jasper (adamjasper[at]gmail.com)
• Please submit manuscripts via the journal’s website. 
• When uploading your manuscript please indicate that you are applying for this special issue, for example: vol. 20.2 – Corruption.
• Manuscript submission guidelines can be found on the Architectural Theory Review website.