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.
