Architecture has never been a neutral discipline.
Inextricable from histories of inequality that continue to perpetuate injustice, architecture has long sustained the brutal enclosure of life. Today, its complicity is becoming better understood through critical explorations of spatial violence, urban activism, sites of colonial ruination, urbicide, and more. Responding to this, architecture is also being reimagined for its potential to act otherwise—to approach what postcolonial scholar Achille Mbembe has called the “disenclosure of the world.” Disenclosure describes an opening, a putting in-common, resisting processes of unfettered exploitation, dehumanisation, and coercion by foregrounding the interdependencies and relations which are integral to the construction of a more just collective future.
But what would disenclosure mean for architecture, which has for so long been defined by its limits, by how it responds to the contingencies of time, money, material, and space? Do restraint and refusal have a place in the necessary work of opening architecture? Where do the edges of enclosure lie—and are they fences or spaces?
Scroope 33 takes the decolonial conception of disenclosure as a provocation that might be articulated, contested, and extended through architectural thinking. This issue aims to question conventional definitions of what architecture is and what it could become. It seeks out new architectural histories, practices, pedagogies, and imaginaries through which we might collectively build a more just future. As such, we are interested in contemplations, critiques, contradictions, and collaborations; we are interested in submissions that challenge form and format, and work that considers the ethical imperatives that animate architecture, as both praxis and built environment.
Submission Guidelines:
We aim to collect two types of pieces in Scroope 33:
1. Long-form essays (3,000–5,000 words)
2. Short-form reflections, meditations, or critical/creative pieces (up to 750 words)
The journal will comprise invited contributions as well as peer-reviewed submissions.
Interested authors should submit abstracts of 200–300 words by 31 March 2024, with the expectation of sending a first draft by 15 June 2024 for review if selected. All abstracts, questions, or other enquiries can be sent to scroope@aha.cam.ac.uk. Please indicate the anticipated length of your piece in your abstract submission.