Cfp: "Architecture + Philosophy 2011," Department of Philosophy, Boston University, April 9-10, 2011.

Thinking about architecture has long been an enterprise of philosophers and architects alike, but in recent years there has been a growing divergence between them over terminological and methodological issues. Philosophers charge architects with mishandling texts and architects charge philosophers with mishandling buildings.

But there are also other divisions among contemporary architectural theorists themselves. Some theorists concern themselves with the human experience, with ethical and poetical questions, and with sensory and aesthetic explorations of architecture and its environment. Other theorists are bent on treating architecture as a form of knowledge that takes shape as a formal and socio-political practice through tools such as language, algorithms, and diagrams. Still other theorists see their task as navigating among these sometimes quite distinct approaches.

Architecture+Philosophy 2011 seeks to clarify thought on the intersection of architecture and philosophy. Keynote speakers will be Dr. Karsten Harries and Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Two panel discussions will be held on concrete and on ethics, love, and architecture. . . .

Find further information here: http://philarch.wordpress.com/.

Dodd, James. Review of Fred Rush's ON ARCHITECTURE. NDPR (July 2009).

Rush, Fred. On Architecture. London: Routledge, 2009. Rush is interested in just what "architecture" would look like, were one to conceive of building from a more robust appreciation of what we might call the experiencing of experience. Again, one should point out that Rush does not provide us here with a general account of the built world (or of experience, for that matter), since in the end he is predominantly interested in how such an architecture is to be apprehended ultimately as an aesthetic object. In this respect Rush's discussion is rather traditional, in that he sees the philosopher's contribution to a discourse on architecture to be either aesthetic or ethical, something that in fact corresponds to the division of the book. Chapter One, "Bodies and Architectural Space", outlines the basic concepts of a phenomenological architecture, while Chapters Two ("Architecture and Other Arts") and Three ("Buildings, Buildings and More Buildings") deal with the significance of these concepts with respect to aesthetics and the ethics of urban design, respectively. Let us take each of these in turn. Drawing principally from Merleau-Ponty, the approach to architecture that Rush has in mind is tied to the theme of embodiment. The idea is that, against what Rush calls the approach of "historical inter-textuality" and "semiological" approaches to understanding architectural form, it is possible to approach the built as a means of expressing structures and modalities of human bodily comportment (pp. 4-5). This is an extension of a philosophical thesis -- that our awareness of our experiencing just is our awareness of our embodiment -- into a reflection on architectural aesthetics, via the insight that the expressive force of the build-world folds back ("loops back", p. 4) into our experiencing itself, raising it to a heightened awareness of itself and, perhaps, in such a way that shapes embodied experiencing. The principal figure in contemporary architecture that Rush discusses here is Steven Holl, who employs phenomenologically inspired notions of "intertwining", parallax, and the primacy of haptic experience in the generation of architectural forms that seek to play on the multiplicity of the dimensions of bodily experience in complex, synthetic ways (pp. 36-38). Rush offers a first person descriptive analysis of Holl's aesthetics in a consideration of the Nelson-Atkins Museum extension project in Kansas City, Missouri. His analysis culminates in the interesting idea that architectural structures that seek to engage the subject in the full dimensionality of bodily experience tend to develop, in a striking fashion, a form of recursive sensitivity, "similar to the way that being sensitive to oneself and one's relation to one's particular life paths is thought indicative of humans" (p. 46). . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16765.

CFP: "Architecture and Phenomenology," Second International Conference, Kyoto Seika University, Japan, June 26-29, 2009.

For further information, please visit: http://www.arch.usf.edu/arch-phenom2/callforpapers.html.

CFP: "Architecture and Phenomenology," FOOTPRINT: JOURNAL OF THE DELFT SCHOOL OF DESIGN 3.

For the third issue of Footprint (http://www.footprintjournal.org/issues/current) we are calling for papers that take accountof current discussions in philosophy and architecture on phenomenology withrespect to space, place, location. Papers which deal with the late work on‘topology’ in Heidegger, and the issue of perception and ‘inner spatiality’ inthe work of Merleau-Ponty are of immediate interest. We hope also to have papers which deal with Brentano’s work on space. A furthertopic of special interest is the critique, provided by Heidegger andMerleau-Ponty, of Descartes, and of functionalism in general. The re-reading ofAristotle by Heidegger with regard to public space, and the development of thisin the work of Arendt is also of interest. Papers are welcome on the work ofarchitects who have deployed insights from the philosophical area of researchfor their work. Examinations of the research of Casey, Malpas, Dreyfus andothers including Ihde would be a welcome addition to the issue, either in theform of short notices or reviews. Articles will be peer reviewed, and the issue is expected to be available atthe beginning of October. All papers and correspondence should be sent to theeditors, Patrick Healy, Brendan O'Byrne, e-mail P.E.Healy@tudelft.nl and marked issue no.3. The deadline for submissions is the 15th of June 2008. Papers shouldbe between 6-8000 words,please see 'Guidelines for Authors' through the link here: http://www.footprintjournal.org/paper_submission.

Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez-Gomez. QUESTIONS OF PERCEPTION: PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE. San Francisco: William Stout, 1996.

3rd Ed. 2006. Further information is available here: http://www.stoutbooks.com/cgi-bin/stoutbooks.cgi/71167.

CFP: "Building Designing Thinking," University of Jyväskylä, Finland, August 30-31, 2008.

In the introduction to his essay on architecture, Abbé Laugier claims that ”in those arts which are not purely mechanical it is not sufficient to know how to work; it is above all important to learn to think.” But how should one then think about architecture, or rather, think in architecture? Is there a specific architectural way of thinking, as opposed to, say, an art historical way of looking at a building? Can design be a form of thinking? Or does it all boil down to subjective taste? The 3rd International Meeting on the Research of Modern Architecture, organised by the Alvar Aalto Academy, examines the points of contact, the influences and effects, the interactions and affiliations, the correlations and cross-fertilisations, the bonds and links between thinking, designing, and building. Chaired by Kari Jormakka, the meeting takes place in August, 2008, in Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Finland, bringing together practicing architects and architectural pedagogues, philosophers and art historians, sociologists and cultural theorists. Further information is here: http://www.alvaraalto.fi/conferences/2008/.