CFP Issue 23: Architectures of Love
CALL FOR PAPERS
Interstices: Journal of Architecture & Related Arts – Issue 23
Architectures of Love
“Radha and Krishna playing Holi”. Painting presented to Shriji Arvind Singh, Mewar of Udaipur, during Holika Dahan 'Rang' - March 2012. City Palace in Udaipur, India. [Source: Wikimedia Commons, photograph, David Clay, 2018]
[…] sexuality and love do not live in the bedroom of Oedipus, they dream instead of wide-open spaces, and cause strange flows to circulate that do not let themselves be stocked within an established order.
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari[1]
Lover, beloved and the space between them […] There is something essential to eros here.
Anne Carson[2]
Building on the remediating orientation set by the “Fixing” issue of Interstices: Journal of Architecture & Related Arts, Issue 23 invites papers that inquire into the coupling of love and architecture. We ask how love is, or may have been, an underlying motivator of built and speculative spaces, and how the materiality of both may sustain object-attachments for ongoing expressions of amorous affect?
Why consider love now, or even at all? Interminably commodified, love is no less harnessed as political affect in the management of intimacy in one direction, and in the mobilization of nationalist discourses in another. What gets held up as love in this oftentimes cynical ‘Age of Aquarius’ is routinely boxed in by hate. Caught up in crowd effects turned sour (particularly mediated crowds), “hate […] circumscribes its own identity”, pinning down the look of the abominated, as Alphonso Lingis notes.[3] And so is hate’s work of abomination readily directed at built and culturally significant places, no less than habitats and the ecosphere itself. Maurizio Lazzarato, goes so far as to declare “capital hates everyone”![4]
Yet, in the face of this, and perhaps because of this, there is a growing body of critical and affirmative thought addressing divergent forms of love and their implication for politics, society, and indeed existential senses more broadly. Contrary to the harsh closing down of hate, thinking on love opens abundantly. As Christopher Fynsk borrows from Jean-Luc Nancy: ‘[t]here are all kinds of love…We know it by the way it strikes us”.[5]
Exploration in this area – to foreground just a small sample – have: critiqued closed forms of love tied to familial, national, and international configurations (Henri Bergson[6]); recognised the centrality of love in human rights, and in turn, for self and community care (Alexander Lefebvre[7]); via feminist and queer outlooks, contested a normative fixing of love relations, love’s place in systems of knowledge, and its role in a politics of hope (bell hooks,[8] Luce Irigaray,[9] Hannah Stark,[10] José Esteban Muñoz[11]); sociological considerations interrogated “love as [codified & systematised] passion” and as inequitably idealised through romance rather than recognized as “confluent” (Niklas Luhman,[12] Anthony Giddens[13]); advanced political economic critiques of love and governance no less than love’s role in a contestation of globalisation (Elizabeth Povinelli,[14] Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt[15]); linked the philosophical underpinnings of affection to recovered wholes, aporia, experimental becoming, erotic phenomena as existential ground, and the experience of radical exposure and transport (Plato,[16] Jacques Derrida,[17] Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari,[18] Jean-Luc Marion,[19] Jean-Luc Nancy,[20]); in studies of material cultures, explored how affection is integrally linked to material expression and agency (Anna Malinowska & Michael Gratzke[21]); and, as indigenous perspectives have asserted in the face of ongoing colonial appropriations of intimacy, the importance of collective relationships and reciprocity centred by aroha, alofa and ofa (Moana Jackson,[22] Phillip McKibbin & Max Harris,[23] Hinemoa Elder,[24] Georgina Tuari Stewart,[25] Te Kawehau Hoskins[26]).
Despite these extraordinarily rich examinations of intimacy on one hand, and architecture’s evolving address of gender, sexuality, embodiment, and affect on the other, relatively little critical/theoretical attendance on the amorous in architecture is at hand. Exceptions include Hélène Frichot et al.’s “Our Infrastructural Loves” in JAE[27] and, as a project, Maki Onishi’s Japanese pavilion for the 2023 Venice Biennale titled “Architecture – A Place to Be Loved”.[28] Alberto Pérez-Gómez offers notable exceptions too in Built Upon Love[29] and Polyphilo: or The Dark Forest Revisited - An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture[30], as does John Hejduk in Architectures in Love[31], and earlier still did Reyner Banham in Rayner Banham Loves Los Angeles.[32]
Following Roland Barthes, rather than love being narrowly seen as something directed at a particular person, more relevant is a structural portrait capturing the ways love and “the lover [are] at work” in an array of contexts.[33] It is such an architectural portraiture of the amorous in its various material, cultural, political, and operational modes—including past and future modalities—that we aim to assemble in issue 23 of Interstices: Architecture & Related Arts.
We invite you to submit a full paper (5,000 word maximum), abstract (100-150 words) and bio-note (80-100 words) for the forthcoming “Architectures of Love” issue of Interstices: Journal of Architecture & Related Arts. Please submit your paper in Chicago format and omit identifying details in the main manuscript.
For full publishing options and formatting details, refer to the Guidelines for Submissions at: https://interstices.ac.nz/index.php/Interstices/information_for_contributors.
Accepted authors will be invited to a one day authors’ workshop prior to final resolution of papers (held in-person & online).
For additional queries contact Andrew Douglas at – andrew.douglas@auckland.ac.nz.
Estimated Timeline:
- 5 April 2023 - Issue of Call For Papers (CFP)
- 24 July 2023 – submission of full papers (email to andrew.douglas@auckland.ac.nz)
- 31 August 2023 – notification of accepted papers
- 15 September 2023 – one day authors’ workshop (in-person & online)
- 20 October 2023 – completion of paper editing
- 5 November 2023 – final proofing approval
- Publication release 20 December 2023
Issue Editors:
Andrew Douglas – University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Susan Hedges – Auckland University of Technology, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau
Karamia Muller – University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Executive Editors:
Andrew Douglas – University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Susan Hedges – Auckland University of Technology, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau
Julia Gatley – University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
[1] Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 116.
[2] Anne Carson, Eros, the Bittersweet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 77.
[3] Alphonso Lingis, “Armed Assault” in Pamela R. Matthews and David McWhirter (eds.) Aesthetic Subjects (Minneapolis, MN & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 42.
[4] Maurizio Lazzarato, Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution, trans. Robert Hurley (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2021).
[5] Christopher Fynsk, “Foreword: Experiences of Finitude”, in Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Connor (ed), The Inoperative Community, trans Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), xviii.
[6] Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra, Cloudesley Brereton & W. Horsfall Carter (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013).
[7] Alexander Lefebvre, Human Rights and the Care of the Self (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018).
[8] bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions, (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2001).
[9] Luce Irigaray, The Way of Love, trans. Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluháček (New York, NY, London: Continuum, 2002).
[10] Hannah Stark, “Deleuze and Love”, Angelaki 17:1 (2012), 99-113.
[11] José Esteban `Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2009)
[12] Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, trans. Jeremy Gaines & Doris L. Jones (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); see also, Niklas Luhmann & André Kieserling (ed.), Love: A Sketch, trans. Kathleen Cross (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010).
[13] Anthony Giddens, Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004).
[14] Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Towards a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2006).
[15] Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2009).
[16] Plato, Symposium, trans Benjamin Jowett (The Project Gutenberg, 2013). Online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm.
[17] For example, in Jacques Derrida, “Aphorism Countertime” in Jacques Derrida and Derek Attridge (ed.) Acts of Literature (New York, NY & London: Routledge, 1992).
[18] Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus see also, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
[19] Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).
[20] Jean-Luc Nancy & Peter Connor (ed.), The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2004).
[21] See, Anna Malinowska and Michael Gratzke, The Materiality of Love: Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018).
[22] Moana Jackson, “Interview: The Politics of Love”. Online at, thepoliticsoflove.com (accessed 20 March 2023).
[23] Philip McKibbin, Love Notes: For a Politics of Love (New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2019). See also, Max Harris, “The Politics of Love”, in Interregnum: Rethinking New Zealand, edited by Morgan Godfery (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016).
[24] Hinemoa Elder, Aroha: Mãori Wisdom For a Contented Life Lived in Harmony With Our Planet (London: Penguin Books, 2020).
[25] Georgina Tuari Stewart, Mãori Philosophy: Indigenous Thinking from Aotearoa (London, New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
[26] Te Kawehau Hoskins, “A Fine Risk: Ethics in Kaupapa Mãori Politics”, New Zealand Journal of Education Studies, Te Hautaka Mãtai Mãtauranga, 47(2), 85-99.
[27] Hélène Frichot, Adrià Carbonell, Hannes Frykholm & Sepideh Karami, “Our Infrastructural Loves: Architectural Pedagogies of Care and Support”, Journal of Architectural Education, 76:2 (2022), 52-69.
[28] Nour Fakharany, “‘Architecture – A Place To Be Loved’: Japan Announces Pavilion for the 2023 Venice Biennale”, ArchDaily. Online at https://www.archdaily.com/998766/architecture-a-place-to-be-loved-japan-announces-pavilion-for-the-2023-venice-biennale (accessed 1 April 2023).
[29] Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Built Upon Love: Architectural Longing After Ethics and Aesthetics (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2008).
[30] Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo: or The Dark Forest Revisited - An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1992).
[31] John Hejduk, Architectures in Love (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1995).
[32] Rayner Banham Loves Los Angeles. Directed by Julian Cooper (BBC, 1972), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymg0e4g7qeQ.
[33] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 4.
