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Dear authors. Thanks for your interest in the conference, we have received a great number of high quality abstracts. We will publish conference abstracts on this page.
The international scientific conference “Between architecture of war and military urbanism” is the 10th edition of the annual series of Urban and Landscape Days. Organized by the Estonian Academy of Arts, Faculty of Architecture, the event brings together architecture, planning, landscape studies, critical urban studies and art.
The idea behind the theme of 2013 is to facilitate a creative and critical interrogation of links between the political economy of war, the transfer of military practices and technologies to urban realm, and the ‘architectures of war’, such as military bases, fortifications and refugee camps, which comprise a largely forgotten topic in planning and architecture.
The conference is of interest to urban scholars, architectural theorists and historians, architects, political geographers, sociologists, and others from the related fields of theory and practice. To explore links between theory and practice, we invite a broad variety of presentations from scientific papers to artistic research and non-standard forms to the following tracks:
Strongholds, fortifications and military bases structure the patterns of urban development in long term. Shelters, field hospitals, or refugee camps represent instant architectural forms. In what ways do these planning, architectural, and engeneering interventions structure – in long-term and short-term perspective – the everyday life? How does the function of these built structures change from military to civil? How is the civil architecture used for military purposes? And how is the very notion of the ‘civil’ architecture structured by the notion of the ‘military’ architecture?
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Spatial technology is the platform of profound interpenetration of the military and the civil. Surveillance and urban combat technologies and practices that used to belong to cutting-edge war technology are increasingly deployed in civil policing and control. Civil and home-made tools are transformed and utilized for the purpose of attack and defense. How does technology shape the organization of military planning, management and labour? How does technology shape the proximity and distance between the military and the civil space? And what is the relationship between war and cyberwar?
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Political economy of land
War itself can be studied as a form of spatial fix. But to equate war with spatial fix as such would be to disregard the complexities in the relationship of political geography and military practice. In what way does war structure the conflicting claims on land? And along what lines do conflicting land claims lead to military conflicts? What are the specificities of the contemporary political economy of war? What is the boundary and interpenetration between military and non-military spatial fixes?
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The language of the conference is English.
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