The
specificity in this approach resides in the openness of understanding the making of a journal as an ecosystem of different
formats, contributions, and content, evolving around a forum based on a triple-legged presence composed of a discursive online
platform, a series of yearly events, and a printed physical artefact.
Towards the journal launch
of issue#0 we are seeking contributions for an
Open Call until
January 8, 2021.The call addresses individuals and groups, academics, practitioners and students who work in
the spatial disciplines. It is open – but not limited to – architects, urbanists, artists and scientists, as much as to scholars
from the humanities who investigate the present and (possible) future of urban processes, conditions and challenges through
theoretical, practical and artistic reflection.
forA on the Urban is
rendered possible by Die Angewandte, conceptualized and produced by the Institute of Architecture, edited by Gerald
Bast, Andrea Börner, Cristina Díaz Moreno & Efrén García Grinda, Baerbel
Mueller and supported by an international advisory board: Tom Avermaete, Margitta Buchert,
Nerea Calvillo, Mario Carpo, Filip de Boeck, Teresa Galí-Izard, Mario Gandelsonas, Andrew Herscher, Sandi Hilal, Nikolaus
Hirsch, Lesley Lokko, Mpho Matsipa, John McMorrough, Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer, Alessandro Petti , Philippe Rekacewicz,
Curtis Roth, Saskia Sassen, AbdouMaliq Simone, Ines Weizmann.
forA on the Urban consists
of different formats, contributions and content, evolving around a triple-legged presence composed of a discursive online
platform, a series of yearly events, and a printed physical artefact. Towards the journal launch of issue #0 the Institute
of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna is seeking contributions until January 8, 2021.
MANIFESTO 1. forA on the Urban examines the open, unfinished, multi-scaled, interconnected, complex and wild nature
of urban manifestations, challenges and situations through an expanded notion of architecture.
2.
Due to the expansive nature and increasing scale of the processes of artificialisation and the parallel deterioration of our
environment, most of the current demands on our civilisations are, in one way or another, intrinsically linked to the urban
condition.
3. Architecture has always had a central role and a responsibility to meet challenges
that cause dramatic changes in social life. Architecture will only continue to remain of societal relevance if it is
willing to accept its societal responsibility and get in closer working contact with other disciplines, as the global challenges
cannot be met through mono-discipline approaches.
4. We need to consider the interrelationships
that produce challenges that tend to create situations of irreversible deterioration of the living conditions of our and other
species, due to their complex, accelerative, multicausal, irreversible and entangled nature, all in order to detect, examine,
analyse and understand these situations in a way that goes beyond the common frames of reference and available practical
tools.
5. Correspondingly, defining the parameters of the urban are crucial to the themes that
orient the journal as both process and artefact. Only by destabilising scalar (disciplinary, and methodological) limitations
can common practices of analysing urbanity through isolated categories be challenged.
6. Exploring
the formats of discursive essays, investigations and projects incites reflection and discussion towards an experimental
multilogue and valuable contribution to the discourse around the urban. Embracing the notions of treatise, disquisition,
and literary and artistic exploration of the essay aims to contribute to the necessary renovation of established vocabulary,
formats, and methodologies, and the deconstructions of their very limits.
7. Thus, combining
research with practical approaches and analysis, the journal seeks to articulate new formulations of urbanism.