Call for Papers: Paper collage, digital collage: concepts of architecture compared

Edited by Anna Rosellini in collaboration with Arianna Casarini and Roberto Paolo Malaspina

Download the Call for Paper (PDF)

In the years following 1968, marked by the international student revolt, some architects refused the traditional type of project and professional practice, enacting a revolution in society through the architectural drawing. This refusal has taken a particular form and manifested itself with an expressive type of drawing, which sometimes took on the features of a manifesto for prefiguring a society to come. As a consequence, a proper universe of images has been generated which has been defined, often with contempt, as “paper architecture.” Those drawings alluded to an architecture that did not intend to be built, but that wanted to become the expression of a dream for a different society. That “paper architecture” was revolutionary, as were Piranesi's drawings and Mies van der Rohe's collages. In that “paper architecture,” collage has played a fundamental role. The collage technique, although in use since the early twentieth century, has acquired a very special value in the cultural, political and ideological climate of the 1960s due to the immediacy and the power of representation of the image.

The visionary premises of these drawings from the 1960s will not be lost. The ideas that crystallized on paper will evolve in the following decades, until finding a concrete substance between the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. The collage technique of the digital age allows architects to outline an image of synthesis with narrative values, impacting the cultural dimension and the form itself of architecture. The digital collage process—with images, signs and colors mounted layer by layer with different software—avoids the realism of the so-called renderings and makes the drawing similar to those created with conventional techniques, although with a novelty: a fantastic realism and a use of perspective altered through calculated forms of pictorialism.

The present call for papers for «piano b» aims to stimulate and collect wide-ranging reflections on the issue of architecture that is narrated and interpreted through a special genre of drawing, which entrusts its creative potential to techniques such as collage, and which intends to be first of all the expression of a cultural dimension, which is substantiated through the image itself and its details.

Possible, but not exclusive, topics are:

• Collage, figurative narratives and “visual essays”
• Collage and architecture’s cultural dimension
• Collage as a tool for defining the idea of project
• Collage as a tool for understanding the city
• Techniques of representation and the digital drawing
• Perspective constructions and collage
• The role of the works of visual art in architectural collages
• The semantic relationship between the use of collage in visual arts and architecture
• New forms of collage: the inventions of digital photography
• The role of photography in architectural collages
• Collage and the reuse of images in media and in artistic practices

The interested professors, critics and scholars can submit their proposals to the evaluation of the Editorial Board by sending them as an attachment to the following email address:

redazione.pianob@unibo.it

Furthermore, in order to submit an article applicants must also comply with the following indications.

How to submit an article

No later than the 9^th September 2019 the applicants must send to the email address redazione.pianob@unibo.it as an attachment a text in a .doc format containing a short abstract (maximum length of 1500 characters, spaces included), no more than 5 keywords and a short biography of the applicant, the valuation of which is entrusted to the Guest Editors of the specific issue. In addition to the original language of the text, the abstract, the applicant’s biography and the keywords must be compulsorily submitted also in English. Once the abstract has been accepted by the Editorial Board, the author can proceed with the writing of the article (a monographic article or an essay) that must not exceed the maximum length of 30.000–40.000 characters (including footnotes and spaces). The drafting of the text, that can be written in Italian, English or French, must follow the editorial guidelines of the journal. All articles must be emailed to the aforementioned email address no later than the 16^th December 2019, specifying the title of the article and the full name of the author in the body of the accompanying email. Each submission will undergo a double blind peer-review process and the article will be anonymously send to two referees. If the judgments of the two referees are in contrast, the Editors (dialoguing with the Guest Editor or the Guest Editors) will decide whether to take responsibility and publish the article or send it to a third referee. The Editorial Staff will communicate to the authors the evaluation process results. The upcoming exit of the issue is planned for January–February 2020.

See also Author’s Guidelines.