VAD 09. Call for Papers. The unknowns

Under the motto "Unknown Unknowns. An introduction to mysteries", the curator of the recent 23rd Milan Triennale 2022, the astrophysicist and director of the Diversity Office at the European Space Agency (ESA), Ersilia Vaudo asked artists, architects and scientists to propose projects that address "what we didn't know that we didn't know". A call with which she invited them to establish collective and interdisciplinary reflections on the immensity of knowledge yet to be discovered.

This request materialised in a constellation of installations, performances, events and debates referring to aspects such as gravity, light, the emerging challenges facing architecture or the mysteries linked to deep space. The curatorial commission sought to expand the frontiers of knowledge and to rethink knowledge that, being already known, deserved to be re-experienced, re-explored; or which, in order to be updated, would need to be combined with other sciences. The paradoxical motto - interpreted as an introduction to the mysterious - manifested the certainty of the existence of unknown unknowns which, in order to be worthy of attention, would require original questioning capable both of illuminating the present and the past from contemporary perspectives, and of promoting a better future.

In an attempt to give continuity to the concept of "the unknown of the unknown" and bearing in mind María Zambrano's statement that there is no knowledge whose origin is not an intuition, VAD magazine invites you to identify the unknowns - or even the intuitions - that the discipline of architecture is currently facing in all its fields: theory, history, the project, the city or its construction. We invite the authors to succumb to the uncertainty of aporias as acceptable as revalidating the permanence or universality of what is already known, or questioning whether what is still unknown is identifiable. Or if we are, at least, capable of intuiting it.

We believe it is pertinent to raise questions about the role that architecture must assume in the face of the multiple contemporary challenges. Urgent challenges such as the architectural and urban consequences that climate change generates, and will generate if urgent measures are not taken, both in our artificial habitat - the built and the landscape - as well as in the natural one. It would be interesting to raise as unknowns the effects on the future of habitable environments derived from climate change; the urban or rural migrations that it will force, the lack of energy resources or the increase in the carbon footprint, etc...

Faced with the security and docility to which we are exposed, due to the marking of algorithms, we also seek to glimpse the role that artificial intelligence will have in the future of the creation of the architectural project, understanding it in all its globality; from the territorial and urban scale to the closest scales referred to the new domesticities.

We hope for reflections that analyse the past in its theoretical, critical or historiographical versions in order to free it from anachronistic views and reinterpret it from perspectives that reveal what were the unknowns outlined that, although utopias at the time of their formulation, materialised in realities that deserve to be interrelated with those of the present.

At the same time, it would be appropriate to question the role of the future architect in our societies in order to identify variables to be modified or updated in their training. Variables that will allow us to review this learning in order to make it suitable for its essential cooperation with other sciences and arts. Along the same lines, approaches and methodologies for an adequate interdisciplinary coordination in architectural research will be welcome in order to make it operative.

In short, following the famous statement by Cedric Price

“If technology was the answer, what is the question?”

We invite you to outline what is the unknown of the unknown through questions that have become the engine of knowledge that we must continue to join in order to contribute.

With the certainty that all unknowns are inherent to the very act of thinking, devising, designing or creating, this issue of VAD magazine invites us to identify them with open questions that lead readers to unveil them, clear them up or, better still, to continue rethinking them in order to preserve their existence. Let us not fear them, but respect them. Let us ask them to continue to occupy our dreams, to continue to come in flocks like swifts. Let us remain attentive, let us wait patiently and alertly... perhaps some awakening will enlighten us to their resolution.

Submissions rules.
Check the SUBMISSIONS section to find out the procedure to follow to send the documentation.

Calendario.
Calendar.
Opening reception of articles: February 1, 2023.
Deadline for receipt of articles: Arpil 30, 2023.
You can check the calendar in the ANNOUNCEMENT section.

Web.
All the information web.

Prologue by María Pura Moreno Moreno.