dialogues

Architecture and Phenomenology

An International Conference at

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning

20-24 May, 2007

Call for Papers

In recent years, the architectural intellectual discourse underwent a significant

transformation as the historical and historiographical scholarships were influenced by

critical theories and methodologies. Architectural history is not any longer considered as

a grand-narrative, but rather interpreted as a multiplicity of political conditions of identity

created by spatiality and architecture. Nevertheless, while most researches effectively

elaborate on the interrelations manifested by space and architecture, they sometimes

collapsed into narrow points of view, neglecting to address the multilayered significations

of the architectural texts as such.

In order to propose a broad discourse, in this conference, we would like to return to

phenomenology and reconsider the relations between this philosophical discipline and

architecture. In parallel to intellectual inclinations in other fields and in the light of the

social and technological revolutions we witnessed at the end of the millennium, the

conference will seek scholarship that is based on phenomenological interpretations.

Through phenomenological examinations of, among others, the following themes – the

relations between subject and object, the state of body in space and place, matter and

memory, the ethics and politics of the poetic, and senses of place – we would like to

reexamine the significance of phenomenology for contemporary architecture. In the

light of contemporary cultural, political, technological and social conditions, how can we

think in phenomenological fashion about architectural concepts such as place, space,

tectonic, matter, and dwelling? What are the means that phenomenology provides for the

architectural discourse and practice today?

Important Dates

We are inviting historians, theoreticians, researchers and scholars of various fields and

backgrounds to submit a paper proposal for one of the below listed themes. Please email

a 500 words abstract, describing the paper proposal to the following email address

archphen@technion.ac.il by May 22, 2006. Accepted papers will be notified by July 24,

2006. First drafts of the papers are due on October 22, 2006. Final papers are due on

March 22, 2007. Registration fees are $400 per academic professionals, and $100 per

students.

Venues

The conference will take place at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology between 20 and 24 of May, 2007. Israel’s

prominent technological institution, the Technion is located in Haifa on the Carmel

Mountain. As the center of the northern Israeli metropolitan, Haifa offers a unique view

on local region and culture.

Internet

Themes:

- Glocalism: Place-Making in Global Conditions

- Digital Culture and the Reshaping of Experience

- Essentialism: In-between Object and Subject

- Architectural Selves: the Embodiment of Place

- Matter and Memory: the Objects of Consciousness

- The Transcendental in Architecture and the Question of Origin

- Revisiting Husserl and Heidegger

- The Depth of Vision: Phenomenological Re-presentations

- Architecture In-between Ethics and Poetics

- Becoming Place: Performance in and of Space

- Spatial Thinking in Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas

- The Time of Space/The Place of Time

- The Sustainable in Architecture

Scientific Committee:

Alberto Perez-Gomez, Andrew Benjamin, Antoine Picon, Arieh Peled, Dalibor Vesely,

David Seamon, Edna Langenthal, Eran Neuman, Hagi Kenaan, Ion Copoeru, Iris Aravot,

Juhani Pallasmaa, Kenneth Frampton, Robert Mugerauer