CfP: Housing

Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand invites papers for a special issue (Vol. 35, No. 2) on the theme of Housing, edited by Kelly Greenop and Isabel Rousset. The deadline is 1st November 2024. 

The current housing affordability crisis in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand is well documented across all forms of popular media, and its causes and implications also well documented across scholarly discourse in economics, planning, and the social sciences. The situation is mirrored across the globe with decreasing access to housing in other economically prosperous and developing nations alike. Yet, the trope of a “housing crisis” is far from new and has a longer history that can be traced back to nineteenth-century reformist discourse on the conditions of Europe’s industrial workers. Since Henry Roberts presented model homes for workers at the Great Exhibition of 1851, architecture has long played a visible role in shaping housing debate.

This special issue calls for papers that explore the historical tensions between architecture, housing, and social politics. How can an architectural perspective illuminate the social history of housing? How has the relationship between architecture and society been historically imagined through housing? We are particularly interested in papers that delve into the nuanced dynamics that govern the success or failure of affordable housing projects between architecture and the state and its bureaucratic systems. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to: temporary housing, emergency housing, prefabrication and standardisation; immigrant housing and refugee camps; public housing and the role of the state; First Nations people’s housing, its design, values and historical apprehension; housing for marginalised groups; discourses on affordability, social need and housing security; the speculative house and the role of real estate; the “housing estate” and the relationship of housing to the city; social justice movements and counter-cultural experiments in housing; imagined housing schemes and social utopias; relationships between housing, land, and settler colonialism; transnational networks and the translation of housing design expertise; the legacy of important historians and critics of housing. 

We welcome papers from any period or geography and particularly encourage papers that connect to histories of Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific and South-East Asian regions. We also welcome papers that critically reflect on the methods of the housing historian and how architectural perspectives can facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue.

Questions about the special issue should be directed to the journal’s co-editors: Kelly Greenop () and Isabel Rousset ()For submission instructions and portal, go to: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rfab20