CFP - Utopian América

[Matthew Heins]

There's a CFP on "Utopian América" for an upcoming issue of the architectural journal ARQ. Full submissions (in Spanish or English) are due August 15. I apologize for the lamentably short notice--it's very difficult to write an article in 12 days!

The CFP is copied below, or can be seen (along with directions) at https://files.cargocollective.com/c1700685/Open-Call-ARQ-121_ENG.pdf. For more information, see https://edicionesarq.com/Open-Call.

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ARQ 121: Utopian América

From the moment of its so-called “discovery,” América has been imagined as a place of possibility. The New World. A moniker built from afar and without: a land of promise, risk, abundance, and myth. These visions of untapped potential—entangled with conquest,
displacement, and extractivism—cast the Americas as a site where utopias might be realised, often at the cost of erasing its original inhabitants and ecologies.

Coined by Thomas More in 1516, utopia holds a telling ambiguity: it means “no place” (ou-topos) but is sufficiently close to “good place” (eu-topos). Since then, the concept has oscillated between aspiration and critique—between imagining radical alternatives and exposing society’s deepest failures. Utopian thinking underwrote modern architecture’s confidence in masterplans, technological optimism, and universalising visions of social order. While some of these ideals were later discredited—too readily conflated with technocracy or authoritarianism—they never quite disappeared.(1) In América, some of these utopias were projected onto real geographies, testing grounds for ideal societies, or escapist narratives from complex realities. In 1935, Joaquín Torres García offered a counter-image: a map of South America turned upside down, declaring “Our North is the South.” His was not just a gesture of inversion, but an invitation—to imagine utopia from América itself, not as a vision imported from elsewhere but as a projection rooted in the continent’s own spatial, cultural, and political horizons.

From early colonial fantasies of paradise and extractive plenitude to radical urban experiments, ecological design proposals, and speculative futures, utopian thinking has left a lasting imprint on América’s landscapes, cities, and imaginaries. This issue of ARQ seeks to explore how the idea of utopia has shaped—and continues to shape—the continent. How have ideals of transformation, refusal, and possibility informed our understanding of the built environment? How have they fuelled architectural and territorial interventions? And how do contemporary projects—amid climate collapse, political disillusionment, and deepening inequality—mobilise utopia as a form of critique, speculation, or repair?

Works and Projects

We seek proposals that engage critically with utopia as concept, tool, or contested horizon. How have architects, landscape designers, planners, or collectives drawn on utopian ideas to propose new ways of living? What projects embody, subvert, or reimagine the idea of América as a land of possibility? We are especially interested in built or unbuilt works that explore the limits and potential of utopian design—from intentional communities to climate imaginaries, from infrastructural dreams to built critiques. Whether historical, contemporary, or speculative, projects should foreground how architecture participates in shaping futures across the continent.

Notes: 1. Reinhold Martin, Utopia's Ghost (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).