Guest Editors: Olivier Vallerand (Université de Montréal), Janus Lafontaine Carboni (EPFLausanne) and Gem Barton (Royal College of Art), on behalf of the Queer Educators in Architecture Network

Charrette, the journal of the association of architectural educators (aae), first published in 2013, is now well established as a pioneering research journal for academics, practitioners, and theorists engaged in design teaching practices and theoretical debates. For this issue (Volume 11, Issue 1), Charrette is excited to announce a special issue guest edited on behalf of the Queer Educators in Architecture network.

Theme:

SURPRISE!

Every architecture student has experienced that moment where they realize that architecture is not what they were expecting. Surprise! This element of surprise often extends beyond the fundamental aspects of the discipline, delving into the personal and intimate experience of the learning process. Navigating between the expected and the unexpected can be both astonishing and unsettling. What, then, becomes the power of surprise and its politics in this context? To which extent and how could astonishment and unsettlement be integrated in architectural and spatial pedagogy?

The Queer Educators in Architecture Network (QuEAN) is calling for educators and students to explore the blurry line between surprise and survival, the potential of surprise in pedagogy to open up discussions about unexplored aspects and queer potentials of the discipline. QuEAN is an emerging constellation of queer spatial design educators connecting across the globe with the common goal of transforming our universities and schools from within, considering queerness as an opportunity to question and dismantle the hierarchies embedded in spatial pedagogies, reflect upon power structures and address the uneven accessibilities of spatial disciplines and their institutions. 

The call builds on a renewed interest in recent years to question the relation between queerness and space. Texts and projects have explored the potential of queer design methods, writing, or histories in challenging how we think about the built environment. Moreover, the term “queer” has been reclaimed to hold many definitions and meanings and, at its most productive, helped foster transnational conversations and solidarities. Beyond the Western-centered paradigm, queer spatial pedagogies can spark rich and productive discussions. In this context, QuEAN is partnering with Charrette in this call to reflect on these emerging queer spatial pedagogies. How have queer methods, both from within spatial disciplines and from other disciplines, impacted the way we teach architecture and design? Where can queer methods be implemented in a design curriculum? What, exactly, does queerness do to architectural education? How do students react to and learn from queer thinking?  Should only queer educators explore such methods? What methods  can navigate from queer subjectivities, communities, and theories to queer spatial pedagogies in classrooms and studios that gather individuals not necessarily identifying as queer? What might be gained and lost in translation? What are the different practices of and needs for queer spatial pedagogies inside and outside Western socio-political contexts?

In line with both QuEAN’s objectives and Charrette’s aims, we seek a broad exploration of pedagogies and education networks. We hope to engage educators, but also students and practitioners, in drawing a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities opened up by queer spatial pedagogies, as well as by the theoretical and practical outcomes of current and past teaching experiments. To do so, we encourage contributors to surprise the readership by exploring a variety of pedagogical modes, including embodied experiences of teaching, alternative modes of writing (autoethnography, creative writing), critical reading lists, knowledge networks, etc. We particularly encourage students to contribute, both as individual contributors or in dialogue with educators.

In addition to this issue of Charrette, QuEAN is developing a series of events and publications. We thus encourage a very broad range of submissions, as authors whose paper might not fit in this special issue could still be invited to contribute to other QuEAN projects.

Submission Formats:

In their expression of interest, authors should clearly indicate which of the following formats they are submitting under and whether the submission will be in written and/or graphic form. Authors who feel their contribution might not fit one of these categories are encouraged to reach out to the guest editors for advice.

• Conventional Essays – 5,000-8,000 words (including all references and endnotes) – must demonstrate their intellectual and theoretical context, method and data, and have a clear conclusion.
• Projects / Personal Narratives – 3,000-5,000 words (including all references and endnotes) – substitute traditional “academic” data with descriptive and reflective content related to personal, educational experiences and/or projects. Narratives may include more images, diagrams, and illustrations.
• Freespace – allows for authors to develop experimental, provocative and/or polemical work, and proposals for diverse illustrated and/or written formats are expressly encouraged.  For this special issue, the guest editors are particularly inviting reflections on practice in the form of a visual essay, prefaced, accompanied and/or succeeded by a short contextualising text.
• Book Reviews and Critical Reading Lists – 1,000-3,000 words (including all references and endnotes) – examine a contemporary book or group of publications that is relevant to the theme of this issue. Authors are encouraged to choose texts that have been published within the last five years.

Publication Timeline:

Queries regarding the open call issue should be directed to the Co-Editors – Annie Bellamy and Nick Drofiak at charrette@architecturaleducators.org. 

500-word expressions of interest should be submitted in the body email, containing author name(s), affiliations, suggested article type, and contact details, according to the timeline below. Selected authors will then be invited to submit a full paper for double-blind peer review and editorial review.

● Expressions of interest due: 22nd August 2024 at 12:00GMT;

● Notification of selected contributions: September 2024;

● Submission of full contributions: January 2025 [exact date TBC];

● Editorial review: Spring 2025;

● Publication Charrette 11(1): Spring/Summer 2025