CFP - Architectures of Solidarity
Matthew Heins
Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia & New Zealand invites papers for a special issue (Vol. 37 No. 2) on the theme of “Architectures of Solidarity”, edited by Ipek Türeli and Anoma Pieris. The deadline for full papers is August 21, 2026, and the publication is scheduled for June 2027.
Solidarity has become an architectural question. Architectural history has long examined how built environments reflect power, identity, and social relations. Yet, recent global movements for racial, environmental, and social justice, struggles for the decolonisation of public spaces, and renewed organizing around labour, precarity, and collective rights, reveal that architecture does more: it mediates collective alliances and ethical commitments. Solidarity is expressed not only through political discourse but also through spatial practices. In this sense, architecture is not merely a witness to social change; it is a medium through which alternative futures can be imagined, negotiated, and built.
Our discipline, with its long-standing attention to the social and political histories of architecture, cities, and landscapes, is increasingly confronting issues of democracy and social justice. This special issue invites contributions that examine the spatial, material, or historical conditions in which solidarity emerges: what forms do architectures of solidarity take, and when do they emerge? In addition, beyond researching and writing about such conditions, how do architectural historians enact or express solidarity in practice – through their methods, collaborations, interpretive choices, or engagement with the communities they study?
Papers may examine the role of public places and buildings in galvanising and sustaining civic actions by minoritised groups and counter-cultures at both local and global scales, ranging from the defence of civil liberties, environmental activism, anti-colonial and anti-war demonstrations to occupy movements. They may extend the historical analysis of these larger mobilisations to more recent challenges to neoliberal expansion, political hegemony, and forms of land, resource, and labour exploitation. These contemporary movements seek redress and reparations for the various forms of social and economic discrimination experienced by minoritised groups. Papers may reflect on the temporary appropriation and transformation of urban public spaces for these agendas. They may examine the ephemeral elements and physical architectures of solidarity such as barricades, encampments, public utilities, temporary housing, community spaces and gardens, signage, monuments and artworks, and also the virtual presences that sustain their politics beyond the temporal limits of a specific event. This special issue invites precedent-setting scholarship that empowers forms of social engagement and cultures of urban activism and that foregrounds minority agendas.
We invite papers that engage with solidarity as conceptualised in diverse ways, including but not limited to:
- Solidarity that develops among individuals who share fundamental values (religion, human rights); as arising from sharing common material interests (labour/co-workers); and from rational choice, e.g., individuals coming together in order to pursue common ends
- Solidarity that arises from positive social energy generated in the course of ritual interaction; emotional energy – solidarity as an intersubjective state
- Solidarity that emerges as a framing different from but sometimes incorporating protest.
- Solidarity that is conceptualised through related terms such as generosity, reciprocity, implication, empathy, respect, affect, communal world-making, radical interdependence – that don’t always align
- Solidarity that is sought by minoritised groups, in majoritarian democracies or political systems with democratic aspirations, who often need coalitions beyond strategically essentialised identity politics in order to be heard
Questions about the special issue can be directed to the guest editors: Ipek Türeli (ipek....@mcgill.ca) and Anoma Pieris (api...@unimelb.edu.au). For submission instructions and portal, go to: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rfab20