CFP - [dis]place

[Matthew Heins]

There's a CFP on the topic "[dis]place" for an issue of the journal Wolkenkuckucksheim (Cloud-Cuckoo-Land), which despite its strange name is a scholarly journal of architectural theory. Abstracts in English or German are due July 6.

It's copied below or can be seen at https://cloud-cuckoo.net/fileadmin/hefte_de/allgemein/cfa-issue-47.pdf. For more information about the journal, see https://cloud-cuckoo.net/en/in-den-wolken/ueber-wolkenkuckucksheim.

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The new issue with the working title “[dis]place” seeks to explore the simultaneous processes of emergence and disappearance of environments. It aims at examining the intertwined practices of inhabiting, designing, and building architectures and landscapes in the context of mobility, change, [dis]placement, and [dis]appearance.

Accessing an environment always includes modifying existing settings and their conditions — consciously or unconsciously, in a designed or uncontrolled manner, voluntarily or forcibly. These changes can be substantial, such as the extraction, transport, and insertion of materials, soil, or energy resources. Transformations happen at places of origin, en route, and at arrival locations. People may identify with new places of residence, or they might feel “out of place.” They can also develop strategies to adapt a new surrounding to their habits, needs and traditions. [dis]place can therefore be negatively or positively interpreted.

The curators of the new issue of Wolkenkuckucksheim|Cloud-Cuckoo-Land|Воздушный замок seek authors who will discuss in their contributions the corresponding understandings of “place” and “displace” as both nouns and verbs. Diverse perspectives of humans, cultures, and artefacts or of animals, plants, landscapes, and materials should be analyzed, as well as the processes and practices involved in inhabitation and transformation of environments.

Contributions that are theoretical, philosophical, or sociopolitical in nature are as welcome as specific case studies of all imaginable scales. Global perspectives are explicitly welcome. The following questions are meant as possible prompts for essays:

- Interpretations, Dependencies, Contradictions

What does it mean to design, inhabit, and thereby change an environment? This section seeks to challenge descriptions and interpretations of spatial identities by reinterpreting their ever-changing conditions. Natural, cultural, or sociopolitical phenomena, events, or activities could play a role, such as flooding or drought, resource extraction, pandemics, migration, tourism, colonialism and post-colonialism, or the fall of the Iron Curtain, to name just a few. How can concepts of arguably permanent places, including utopian places, be understood when change is embraced? What roles do architectures and landscape architectures play in mobile or nomadic cultures? And what do the terms environment, surrounding, ambience, milieu, space, place, landscape, lifeworld, community, habitat, among others, then entail?

- Actors and Agents
Who deconstructs and constructs buildings, settlements, landscapes, or regions? Residents, tourists, political parties, businesses, animals, plants? What materials and artifacts are involved? What is the impact of climate change and globalization? What does place appropriation imply for (human and non-human) travelers, migrants, and residents? How do social media transform environments? This section intends to look at human and post-human perspectives by discussing actors and agents at all imaginable scales, from microbial to planetary systems.

- Processes, Practices, and Methods
How are places inhabited and re-inhabited, for whose benefit and at what cost? How do processes of feeling “in-place” and “out-of-place” unfold? How can buildings or landscapes be designed when simultaneous placement and displacement are acknowledged? What are processes of resisting displacement, for example gentrification, and how do such processes strengthen the identity of neighborhoods? How does a small-scale replacement start the process of spatial transformation? How does a large-scale intervention radically change an existing spatial condition? And how do scales intertwine when we consider climate change and/or globalization? This section intends to analyze the processes, practices, and methods related to spatial inhabitation and displacement.

By July 6, 2026
Submission of abstracts, 500 words, in German or English to rev...@cloud-cuckoo.net

By August 3, 2026
Double-Blind Review and Selection of Abstracts, Feedback to Authors

By October 26, 2026
Full-Article Submission

By December 14, 2026
Feedback to Authors

By February 8, 2027
Submission of Revised Articles

Please send your abstract to:
rev...@cloud-cuckoo.net

For more information, see:
http://cloud-cuckoo.net/en/in-den-wolken/informationen/

Abstracts and papers will be reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process.

Curators
Yasmine Abbas | Assistant Teaching Professor of Architecture | Director of the Immersive Environments Lab, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Ute Poerschke | Professor of Architecture, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Friedrich Poerschke Zwink, Architekten, Munich, Germany | Co-Editor of Wolkenkuckucksheim|Cloud-Cuckoo-Land|Воздушныйзамок (W|C|B)
Lynnette Widder | Professor of Practice in Sustainability Management, Columbia University, New York, USA