call for articles 48 :: building materials
the stuff that buildings are made of
traditional, innovative new, old local, global industrial, artisanal flexible, recalcitrant singlular, hybrid
Don’t think of this list as fixed binaries: take each term as the end points of a range, from traditional to innovative, from new to old. There are historical shifts along such trajectories that relate to technology, conflict, exploration, identity, manufacturing and refinement capacities. Skill sets, scarcity of raw materials, or surplus materials — buildings start here, with the materials they are designed to use. We would like to survey what is interesting about materials themselves: their manufacture, their potential in use, in impact, in longevity, in the architecture that interests you. This an open call to you all, whether you wish to discuss any of your own particular projects, or something you have seen and noted, or ideas for materials not yet developed. Tell us why you want to write about a particular building material or the materials necessary to support a particular building system. Proposals by December 1, 2025. The proposals might outline something you’ve already built, or written about or studied. Or they may outline something you wish to research for a short article: the first step of perhaps a larger project or study. What we are looking for is a concise outline of an article, essay, photo-essay or video that we can fairly consider as a contribution to On Site review 48 , so not too abstract or vague, and not off-topic. And we will hold you to your proposal, so make sure you are committed to it. We sometimes approve a proposal and then, perplexingly, receive something totally different which we then can’t fit in.
Final submissions are due 6 weeks later, January 15, 2026, so make sure you have time for this.
This issue will be about the materials with which architecture is made in all their gnarly details, their glories and their problems. How and where are such materials made? What are they made of? How are they manufactured, transported, managed, used?
Send your proposal to us here: www.onsitereview.ca/contact-us
£ Please forward this link – https://onsitereview.ca/callforarts to anyone you feel might be interested in contributing to this or any of our discussions.
43
on site review 47 :: standing still
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator