Architecture Inside/Out

Architectural discourse is problematized by notions of insides and outsides: Its productions, institutions, disciplinary boundaries, geographical alignments, and social milieu all raise questions of interiority and exteriority. How do we frame our research so as to delimit, dissolve, and reconstitute these edges?

• - What sort of artifacts or practices should be included within the bounds of architectural design and history?
• - How do other disciplines inform the study, practice, and theorizing of architecture, and vice-versa?
• - What role do metropolitan centers and their institutions play in forming architectural communities and topics of study? How do geographically and culturally dispersed institutions interact, if at all, and define their respective roles?
• - Whom does architecture serve and what are the relations between architect, client, state, and public? How does this matrix operate in different national contexts?
• - What are the tensions between the academy and the profession, or between the various niches of criticism, history, and studio education within the academy?
• - What socio-economic groups are enlisted within the ranks of the profession, and how do institutional structures influence its demographic make-up?

In order to open up the discussion to a community beyond our institutional department and disciplinary boundaries, we are proposing that this very act of "opening up" (or, flipping "inside-out") should constitute both the topic and the structure of our proposed program. That is, in order to interrogate issues of interiority and exteriority, we resist the prescribed outlines of an academic conference, and want rather to extend this discussion by eliciting a diverse range of speakers and employing a broad array of media and conversational venues: we propose to invite participants of international scope both outside and inside university departments of architecture to participate in a public series of workshop discussions; organize graduate symposia to give students from various institutions and programs an opportunity to present their research; finally, to extend the conversation (both demographically and temporally), we will launch a website with audio-recordings from the events, as an online discussion forum to provide an ongoing site for intellectual exchange.