REGION AHRA 2021

LU-Arc is proud to have the opportunity to host the 18th Annual International Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) Conference 11 - 13 November, 2021.

This year's conference will question what the ‘region’ and ‘regional’ mean for architectural cultures past and present, and to speculate on what different forms and formulations they might take in future.

Along the way we aim to explore the region as a real geographical site of evolving socio-economic activity, as a mythical locus of enduring value, as a gatekeeper of indigenous crafts and vernacular techniques, as a site of architectural and artistic imagination, and as a repository of contested and mobile identities.

We invite contributors to engage with this from a variety of disciplines including architecture and design, urbanism, literature, the arts and film, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and geography, across all expressive media.

We have provided below some of our thematic priorities as well as an outline discussion that we hope provokes some responses.

Registrations and competition now open

Conference registrations and competition entries are now open and receiving. We are also still open to considering late abstracts, so please feel free to submit or contact us to discuss.

Book your place Call for abstracts

Provisional themes

Crafted Regions

  • Craft, tradition and the contemporary vernacular
  • Heritage: industries and anthropologies
  • Regional style and typologies

Networked Regions

  • Sustainability, infrastructure and distribution
  • Ekistics, metabolism and planetary urbanism
  • Spatial analytics and new cartographies

Political Regions

  • Regional retreats and communes: Die Brücke to Drop City
  • Borders, conflicts and resistances
  • Portable regions: identity and migration

Future Regions

  • Uninhabited hinterlands, robotized regions
  • Archipelago cities and megalopolises
  • Extremes: depths, altitudes, terraforming

Conference team

The LU-Arc conference team includes Dr. Falli Palaiologou, Dr. Simon Richards, Dr. Cagri Sanliturk and Dr. Rob Schmidt III. Please feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.

LU-Arc School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering, Loughborough University