The architect, as well as the innovative researcher, has been commonly viewed as a single, autonomous creator. This view has become obsolete in an increasingly complex society where most things are accomplished in some sort of collaboration. Planning and architectural design as well as the corresponding practices of academic research has increasingly become collaborative projects that include actors of different expertise, agendas and fields. Furthermore, no creative subject acts in ‘splendid isolation’; all practices are entangled and embedded in cultures, power relations and material constellations.  

This conference is labeled co-laborations. By this term, problematizing the notion of collaboration, we seek on the one hand associations to the domain of division of labor – between authors, between researchers and writers, between architects and clients. On the other hand the term also arouses questions related to “laboratory” approaches to design, in the sense testing and communicating design (or design research) ideas in direct contact with the public. Hence, we would like to address the motivations and mechanisms of co-creation, co-making and co-writing, and how they form part of participatory practices. We would specifically like to encourage contributions where the writing format itself is collaborative. In some academic fields co-authorship, for instance, is widely recognized – even considered to be the normal state –, but for some reason is less often pursued in architectural research. Apart from actualising various practices in planning and proposal-making, the theme of co-laboration may also address the fact that researchers take part in, hence influence, not only each other, but the matter being investigated. The notion of co-laboration may also, in a more general sense, include aspects and theories of the interplay between human beings and matter, of distributed agencies, of boundary objects, etc. Possible themes for the conference include (but is not restricted to):

  • Inter- and transdisciplinary research collaborations
  • Dialogical practices in architecture, planning and design
  • Participatory planning, research and design
  • Collective spaces and actions in urban life
  • Cosmopolitics and the co-existence of knowledge forms

The aim of this conference is to discuss the various thematic facets and effects of co-laboration, and to encourage co-writing in architectural research. The conference is organized by ResArc, The Swedish Research School of Architecture, and encourages PhD-students, senior researchers (and joint contributions of the two) to submit proposals.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words may be submitted together with the applicant’s name, title of paper, professional affiliation, and e-mail address, to resarc[at]arkitektur.lth.se

The conference will be organized in four sessions. Each session will consist of 6-8 papers. Each paper presentation should be limited to 15 minutes.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

  • Apolonija Sustersic is a practicing artist and architect with a longstanding interest in collaborative projects related to urban planning, architecture and democracy. She is Professor and Head of Department at Art & Public space, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, since 2014, and presented a PhD in 2013 at Fine and Performing Arts, Malmö Art Academy, Lund University, Sweden, with the title: Hustadt, Inshallah: Learning from a participatory art project in a trans-local neighbourhood.
  • Erling Björgvinsson is a Parse Professor of Design at the School of Design and Craft, Faculty of Fine Arts, Gothenburg University. A central topic of his research is participatory politics in design and art, in particular in relation to urban spaces and the interaction between public institutions and citizens. Among his publications can be mentioned the chapter ”Public Controversies and Controversial Publics” in the MIT Press book Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design and Democracy.
  • Karen Franck is Professor in the College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA. She is a social scientists who writes about the social aspects of architectural design and urban public public space. Her most recent works include Design through Dialogue (co-written with Teresa Von Sommaruga Howard), and Memorials as Spaces of Engagement (co-written with Quentin Stevens). She has also written on designing for human needs, in Architecture from the Inside Out, with Bianca Lepori, and on possibility and diversity in urban life, in Loose Space.