Architectural Ghosts
This session explores the concept of the ghostly in architecture. While the "ghost" in architecture might refer to actual haunted places, it also refers to the unfinished, the remnant, the referenced, the remembered, and the ruined. How, when, and where do we find and interpret the ghostly in architecture? Whether it be the flicker of spatial remembrance like a passing sense of cold, the palimpsest of a former window on a solid brick wall, or a crumbling foundation overgrown in the woods—spirits, souls, traces, and the spaces in between abound in our experience of, and critical approaches to, architecture and its histories. The ghostly can complicate ideas about originality, temporality, authenticity, and the sacred. It may imply a process of design that could linger in uncanny twilight between the conscious and the unconscious. Moreover, might architectural ghostliness lure us towards nostalgia, utopia, and imagined histories? Architects haunted by various histories may be caught up in the ghostly too: the spectres of lost opportunities or ruined spaces, and, significantly, the persistent power of the past. The concept of the architectural phantom could equally imply spaces of the ephemeral—opening up possibilities of the architectural image in visual culture or performative practices. What can writers—from ancient dramas to gothic tales to modern critical theory—offer to the study of the ghostly in design? We are interested in papers that explore any aspect of the architectural ghost: the unfinished project, the troubled biography, the voices of the memorialized in monuments or crypts, the fragment and its imagined completion, or any case study or theoretical paradigm in which architectural apparitions, residues, shadows or wraiths might be found.
Session Chairs: Karen Koehler, Hampshire College, and Ayla Lepine, University of Essex
Architecture and Carbon
In the 18th century, the scientist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur set about differentiating steel from cast iron. What separated them, he discovered, was their carbon content, and he praised the lower levels in steel for its artistic and industrial benefits. Later, John Ruskin lectured his Victorian audience that limestone was nothing but carbon, air, and lime: "the breath of the earth joining with the cold metals produced a thing that was a blessing to man." Today, the element evokes images of damaging excess rather than the promise of a limitless resource. Creating a "carbon-neutral economy" was the goal of the COP21 conference, which proposed leveraging taxes against greenhouse emissions. As these examples suggest, architecture's entanglements with carbon range from materials science to ethical claims and cultural taboos. Yet even casual borrowings like the expression "the building block of life" underscore carbon's fundamental role in human existence. On the one hand, it is an essential component of all living assemblies, from DNA to the plants and animals making human life possible. On the other, as we plunder the carbon-rich remains of previous mass-extinctions, we risk precipitating our own.
This panel seeks to probe architecture's relationships with carbon in its multiple guises, across any period or region. We ask that papers attend to architecture's engagement with nature in its elemental forms, preferring case studies to trans-historical speculation. How has the study, manufacturing, or use of carboniferous resources influenced architecture and its discourses? What are the stakes where the "organic" or "sustainable" are concerned? What avenues have been opened by non-carbon-based products like glass and silicon? How might these inquiries relate to larger discussions on nature and man's place within it?
Session Chairs: Jason Nguyen, Harvard University, and Marrikka Trotter, Harvard University
Paper proposals to be uploaded to the conference website by June 6, 2016:http://www.sah.org/conferences-and-programs/2017-conference-glasgow/call-for-papers