Architecture and inequity: New practices of Care

This week, in partnership with the Royal Academy of Arts, we’re delighted to launch the Call for Papers for our annual LFA Symposium, which will be taking place digitally in June 2021. Now in its fourth year, our LFA Symposium continues to provide an exceptional platform for participants to develop their thinking on our 2021 theme of ‘care’, and its impact on and relationship with our built environment.

All academics, architects, researchers, artists and spatial practitioners – both emerging and established – are welcome to apply to participate and share their work exploring different interpretations of ‘care’ in the Symposium.

2020 was marked by global emergencies on an unprecedented scale, forcing us to face many uncomfortable truths about our society. In an attempt to learn from these challenges, this year’s Symposium represents an important opportunity for participants to consider the systematic inequalities in our cities, going beyond existing problems to recognise how we can learn from these issues and propose alternative, positive solutions.

We are looking for submissions of original research that demonstrate bold new ideas and approaches, and explore our built environment from a critical perspective. The symposium will group papers that investigate complementary topics in pairs or panels, with a focus on discussion.

Topics explored may include:

• Strategies for highlighting and learning from the intersection of racial, gender- and class-based inequalities within our cities
• Use of hostile design strategies to support systematic exclusion, with a focus on approaches that co-opt and change the products of such design to positive effect
• How placing the experiences of people with disabilities and neurodivergent individuals at the centre of design approaches can result in better environments for everyone
• The privatisation and commodification of public space and access to it; exploring strategies for creating truly public space in contemporary society
• The architectural and urban implementation of feminist principles of care
• Lack of care and accountability within the built environment sector
• The selective implementation of environmentally friendly strategies in our cities and opportunities for circumnavigating the effects of such policies

*DEADLINE EXTENDED*

Interested participants are invited to submit an initial expression of interest, including a 300-word abstract and a one-page CV, by midnight on Monday 12 April 2021. More information on submission requirements can be found here.

Since being established in 2018, the LFA Symposium has been run in partnership with the Royal Academy of Arts as a focal point of the Festival’s summer programme. Last summer, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the symposium – ‘Architecture and power: conversations around people and place’ – took place digitally for the first time, inviting a global audience to join the conversation, exploring the connections between ‘power of the place’ and ‘power of the people’.

Previous keynote speakers include Farshid Moussavi OBE RA (Director of Farshid Moussavi Architecture), Eyal Weizman (Director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London) and Mary Duggan (Founding Director, Mary Duggan Architects).

Now, we’re delighted to see this Festival favourite event return for another year, as the 2021 event promises to continue this rich exploration of the annual theme. We are grateful for the continued support of the Royal Academy in helping us shape this platform for voices from across the industry to start and engage in conversation with their powerful ideas. Our 2021 theme taps into many current issues, and we’re excited to see responses that can capture, challenge and explore the role of ‘care’ in our cities, communities our profession and beyond.

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