This strand considers historical and contemporary perspectives on:
- philosophical and psychological definitions of the ‘human’ and how these have related the human to its ‘environment(s)’
- contemporary scientific and technological advancements, like neuroscience, that are furthering the two-directional influences between the ‘human’ and its ‘environment(s)’
- emerging cultural studies, incl. those of indigenous cultures, that challenge West-centric epistemological models on the above issues
Potential topics include:
- specific historical or contemporary definitions of the ‘human’ and how these affect our conceptions and perceptions of architectural environments
- temporary or long-term diversions from ‘universal’ definitions of human health or ability and the particular conceptual considerations that these may dictate when designing or interpreting architectural environments
- what additional dimensions cultural diversity may add to (any of) the above issues
We invite individual paper submissions that address the issues/topics above, or one of the thematic sessions below.
AI-Accessibility
Convenor(s): Andrew Gipe-Lazarou (Virginia Tech, School of Architecture), Luis Borunda (Virginia Tech, School of Architecture)
The AI-Accessibility session invites papers which explore two-directional influences between artificial intelligence and the human-centred design of the built environment, and seeks to investigate, in particular, how AI-driven assistive technologies and building systems are reshaping environments to enhance inclusivity, health, and wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 2.5 billion people globally rely on one or more assistive products to interact with and within the built environment. The infiltration of AI into assistive technologies and building systems – e.g. smart wheelchairs, AR-glasses, touchless elevator controls, voice-controlled lighting, emergency evacuation assistance, real-time patient monitoring – demonstrates the potential to optimize the individual spatial experiences of disabled individuals who account for nearly 16% of the global population. Topics of interest in this session may include, but are not limited to:
Design methodologies that integrate AI for accessibility and inclusivity.
- The role of healthcare architecture, especially mental healthcare environments, in nurturing wellbeing.
- Responsible technology, ethical and societal implications of AI-driven accessibility solutions and its impact on marginalized groups.
- Case studies and examples of assistive technologies in architecture and urban design.
- Papers exploring how AI and accessibility intersect in diverse cultural contexts or geographic regions.
Proposals should present new readings of the reciprocal relationship between disabled individuals, the development of assistive technologies, and the design of healthy and inclusive environments. Contributions which address the role of AI in shaping physical spaces, digital interfaces, and urban contexts are particularly welcome, as are those which explore interdisciplinary approaches and actionable strategies that bridge responsible technological innovation with human-centred design principles.
Format: Hybrid paper session
Degrowth, Cities and Urban Environments
Convenor(s): Robin Wilson (University of Nottingham), Katharina Borsi (University of Nottingham)
Debates on degrowth as a means to address the challenges of living harmoniously within planetary boundaries have received increasing attention in diverse fields, from political ecology, to economy, to anthropology. In times of global environmental crisis, the degrowth concept suggests alternatives to sustainable development and green growth. It envisages a reduction of resource and energy use, local and global social equity, and a different perspective of what the good life is. It is only recently that questions around how this concept might be spatialised, and by implication, how it can be linked to the future of the city, have received attention.
Proponents for urban degrowth emphasise the need for fundamental and complex changes of politics, policies, and practices. This shift also places emphasis on a relational worldview underpinned by a collective dimension, in which communities are interdependent, where resources, work, and caring are shared. At its core, it reimagines the balance between living and working for the benefit of the planet.
We are interested in exploring how historical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches can help us speculate on and debate scenarios for future urban environments shaped by degrowth, as well as how we might transition to such an imagined future.
Contributions could include historical or theoretical conceptions of cities and urban environments, or urban tools and concepts of the past that allow to rethink cities, urban ecologies and spatial scenarios of living and working at different scales.
Format: In person paper session
Environments Associated with Late-life and/or End-of-life
Convenor(s): Sam Clark (Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), Cardiff University), Annie Bellamy (University of the West of England in Bristol)
The session ‘Environments Associated with Late-Life and End-of-Life’ aligns with Conference Strand 2, ‘Human-Centred Environments’, focusing on how understanding the relationship between humans and their surroundings can improve designs that support health and wellbeing. While residential and healthcare environments are the focus, contributions exploring ‘unexpected’ settings like prisons and institutions are also welcome. Additionally, we recognise that not all deaths occur in later life, so papers addressing environments for younger individuals, such as children’s hospices and paediatric healthcare, are encouraged.
This session offers an opportunity to reflect on evolving cultural and philosophical approaches to human mortality and the frameworks that shape designed environments. In the UK, this includes addressing a flatlining economy, growing population, and increasingly acute health and housing needs, as well as adapting and ‘making-do’ with existing environments. We encourage contributions focused on architectural responses to ageing-in-place and third-age design, following seminal reports like ‘HAPPI’ (HCA, 2009) and ‘Silver Linings’ (Barac et al, 2013). How do we evaluate the role of design and its contribution to health and wellbeing? What are the limits of ageing-in-place? Is there too much emphasis on ‘active ageing’ and ‘independent living’, potentially ignoring human ageing and mortality? Do cognitive decline and death continue to be taboo?
We are particularly interested in multicultural perspectives on late-life and end-of-life and see this session as an opportunity to grow understanding of how different global regions and societies are responding to ageing populations. We also invite methodological insights; to learn what design methods exist to observe and measure person-environment fit, particularly in circumstances where the person is not available or able to provide environmental intelligence. With this is mind we would be interested in developing a workshop element to the session to gather views on the palliative care concept of ‘dying in place’.
Format: In person paper session
Hostile Design in Context
Convenor(s): Solmaz Kive (University of Oregan)
Hostile design/architecture, also known as “defensive” or “exclusionary” design, refers to the deliberate use of design to prevent people from utilizing a space or object in undesired ways. While it may target teenagers, skateboarders, or other user groups, it is often used to exclude unhoused individuals from public spaces. The development of anti-homeless hostile design can be traced back to the rise of homelessness following the Industrial Revolution, marked by rapid urbanization, industrialization, and economic dislocation. Simultaneously, public spaces were shaped to enforce societal norms, using exclusionary design measures to control access and behavior. With the contemporary rise of homelessness, exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies, austerity measures, gentrification, and other planning strategies, hostile design continues to serve dominant models of urban governance through control and surveillance.
Although the term “hostile architecture” was not coined until recently, nineteenth-century criticisms, such as Augustus Pugin’s influential Contrasts (1836), highlighted examples of inaccessible public spaces or amenities as a critique of modern society. More recently, critics of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) have pointed out how defensive strategies perpetuate inequality under the guise of safety and order. Meanwhile, as activism has drawn attention to hostile design, its strategies have shifted from explicit spikes and chains to more subtle elements like bike racks, boulders, and planters.
This panel seeks to historicize and theorize hostile architecture within the broader discourse of architectural history. How have these exclusionary practices evolved over time, and what socio-political forces have shaped their implementation? How have marginalized communities navigated and resisted such spatial oppression? Additionally, what alternative design approaches challenge or reimagine public spaces to foster equity and inclusion? Papers are invited to critically examine the intersections of hostile architecture with spatial justice, equity, and urban planning. Contributions from critical geography, urban studies, sociology, and intersectional feminist theory are encouraged.
Format: Hybrid paper session
Environments of Disability
Convenor(s): Nina Vollenbroker (The Bartlett School of Architecture)
‘Disability is not a minor issue that relates to a small number of unfortunate people’, Lennard Davis argues, urging scholars not to consider ‘the person using the wheelchair or the Deaf person but the set of social, historical, economic and cultural processes that control the way we think about the body’ (Davis,1995,P.3). This panel starts from the premise that architectural processes must also be seen as central producers of disability: the built environment is a site of powerful control and has – over the past century – had enduring significance within shifting ideological positions on human diversity. However, while architectural scholarship has been invigorated by discussions of intersectionality – a nuanced model of difference acknowledging the cross-over of systems of oppression based on race, class, sexuality, and gender – it remains to be informed by a thorough awareness of spatial injustices around disability. To addresses this shortfall, the session calls for papers at the conjunctures of disability (including deafness, neurodiversity, and chronic illness), the built environment, and social control, addressing questions such as:
- How does architecture imagine disability?
- How has it been a key site in able-bodied majorities’ quest for dominance over disabled minorities?
- How do architectural environments commissioned by governments (specialist schools, asylums etc) reflect changing societal attitudes or political regimes?
- How have disabled communities used architecture to resist societal/political claims over their identity, agency, and worth?
- How do we ensure architectural history doesn’t perpetuate the dominance of able-bodied perceptions or uncritically reiterate normative spatial narratives?
- How can considerations of disability intersect with architecture’s critique of gender, race, class, and sexuality to undermine hierarchies of power and influence?
Overall, this panel problematises the reciprocal relationship between architecture, disability, and societal developments and deconstructs canonical notions of bodily universality and normativity in architecture.
Format: In person paper session
Masculinities, Landscapes and Environments: Conceptualising Gendered Approaches to Nature and Society
Convenor(s): Svava Riesto (University of Copenhagen), Luca Csepely-Knorr (University of Liverpool)
With news about the warmest January ever recorded, the questions of human’s effect on the environment is – and has to be– in stark focus. While extractive attitudes towards the environment are coming into focus again, with political will towards care and repair seemingly diminishing, this panel invites gendered readings of the relationship between humans and their environment, to discuss possible ways to mitigate the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
While the impact of hegemonic/industrial/breadwinner masculinities on extraction of landscapes, exploitation of natural resources and initiating environmentally and ecologically challenging policies have been discussed by feminist scholars since the environmental movement in the 1970s, a growing body of recent publications aim to nuance our understanding of the relationship between masculinities and the environment. However, there is little academic focus on the relationship between masculinities and planning or design. Drawing on research (MacGregor & Seymour 2017, Hultman & Pulé 2018 & 2021, Houlbrook at al 2024), that introduces the multiplicity of masculinities, their internal complexity and relationship to broader axes of social difference, this session invites papers that discuss the relationship between landscape– and environmental planning, and masculinities. We ask papers to consider what we can learn from gendered readings of landscape and environment to understand the multiplicity of masculinities that have been shaping and keep on shaping our relationship to nature, as a starting point for discussing how they can shape our future response towards the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
Topics may include historical and contemporary perspectives on (but not limited to):
• Masculinities and Colonial Environments
• Indigenous readings of relationships between gender and environment
• Masculinities, class and Empire – then and now
• Questioning gender binaries of care and repair
• Industry, Extraction and Masculinities
• Gendered readings of the built environment professions
Format: In person paper session