CA²RE @ Milano 2025-Apr-03-05

We are happy to announce the 17th CA²RE conference under the topic AUTHORSHIPS. The conference is hosted by the PhD Program Architectural, Urban and Interior Design (AUID) and the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU) at Politecnico di Milano. The events are organized in association with ARENA, EAAE and ELIA.

Link for submission: https://conferences.polimi.it/e/Ca2reMilano
Contact mail for further information: ca2re@polimi.it
Website: https://milano.ca2re.eu

IMPORTANT DATES

November 9, 2024. Announcement event @CA2RE Belgrade
December 6, 2024. Publication of the Call
January 27, 2025. First stage Abstract Submission
February 24, 2025. Notification of Acceptance + Registration Opens
March 28, 2025. Second stage Submission + Closing Registration
April 3-5, 2025. Event

The CA²RE Community (Conferences for Artistic and Architectural Research) is an open network that aims to improve design-driven and artistic research quality through intensive peer-reviewing at critical stages. The CA²RE conferences bring together senior staff, advanced researchers, and early-career researchers to understand, scrutinise and enhance the quality of research through intensive peer reviews. We wish to contribute to the open and diverse fields of architectural, design and artistic research. This openness includes environmental design, sustainable development, interior design, landscape architecture, urban design/urbanism, music, performing arts, visual arts, product design, social design, interaction design, and others.

AUTHORSHIPS

Authorship, as a compound noun, harks back to the Latin auctor, meaning “one who carries forward or increases,” and is linked to the suffix -ship, transposing its concreteness into a certain action, fact, or relation. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term first appeared in the 18^th century, when also patents and licenses started to operate for codifying what a scientific work should be, explicitly orienting it towards standardization. Within this perspective, and even more today, authorship embodies a sort of cultural nightmare and academic obsession because of the favor that research — based on automatic parameters, on the number of citations and patents, measurable scientific impact and quantitative analysis — globally receives from the funding institutions and consequently from the academic ones. However, author/ship today claims for more complex dynamics, at least for some reasons. If there is no doubt that, regardless of the disciplinary specificities, the researcher must face the where and how knowledge production becomes authorial, it is also undeniable how much the emergent technologies, the openness of sources, and the growing technification of processes are reframing both ongoing research agencies and the meaning of authorship itself.

Design-driven research is no exception, nowadays undergoing profound changes due to the emergence of an expanded idea of the design realm, more reticular and multidirectional. To the point that even doctoral/independent/personal research, rather than being the product of a single situated author, often relies on specific tactical constructs aimed at binding together heterogeneous disciplines and contributions without expecting a unified and coherent outcome. Both in terms of techniques and of approach, we see how research on, by, and for design, today works as a connector between different sets of knowledge, enlightens dismissed historiographies, and introduces lateral perspectives by assembling heterogeneous and preexisting fragments in new and unexpected narrations.

The Milan CA²RE Conference seeks to investigate possible forms of authorship vis-a-vis the contemporary knowledge production and dissemination within the design and artistic domains. We aim to question the role of the author and the sense of originality at present times when design and artistic research-based practices often experiment with different operating strategies. We welcome contributions reflecting on the techniques and the processual approaches involved in constructing specific narratives, aiming to affirm the roles and modes of authorship by positioning them in the contemporary cultural contexts of design-driven and artistic research.

PARTICIPATION

We invite researchers and practitioners from diverse fields of Design-driven research at any stage and context to apply for presenting and discussing their projects at the event. Inputs from all relevant fields and disciplines are welcome: architectural design, urban design and planning, sustainable development, interior design, landscape architecture, music, performing arts, visual arts, product design, social design, interaction design, and others.

1^st STAGE SUBMISSION

Participants are selected through a peer-review process. For the first stage submission, the applicants are asked to provide:

extended abstract (from 800 to 1200 words), including 1 illustration (image/drawing/photo/collage etc.);
max 3 keywords;
short text (max 50 words) on practical indication regarding the media used for the in-person presentation;
short text (max 250 words) about how/where positioning “authorship” in research;
a short cv (max 100 words) not to be included in the main file you’ll be uploading;

2^nd STAGE SUBMISSION

For the conference publication, the selected applicants are invited to choose between a written or a visual essay, depending on the focus of the planned presentation and preferences for publication. Layout specifications will be sent with the Email of Acceptance, as a general indication, please consider the following options:

Written essay. Abstract (150 words); keywords (max 3); text. (1200-2400 words); 1 image; bibliographic references; short cv (100 words).
Visual essay. Abstract (150 words); keywords (max 3); text. (800-1200 words); minimum 4 images; bibliographic references; short cv (100 words).
Images must be 21 cm base, 300 dpi and free of rights or with the authorization for publication/reproduction.

Written and visual essays of selected participants will be published in the conference proceedings (with ISBN). Selected participants will also contribute to the CA²RE+ database of evaluated materials (delivering digital files of the presentation and any other document presented at the event, licensed under [(CC) BY-NC-SA]).

Feel free to browse the database of CA2RE+ EXPERIENCES (https://ca2re.eu/results/).

IN-PERSON PRESENTATIONS

During the in-person sessions (4-5 Apr.), the selected participants will have 60 minutes to present their project and discuss their work with an international panel composed by senior staff and practitioners. We aim to experiment different in-person media presentations, avoiding frontal dynamics and PPT/screen formats where not strictly linked to the specific medium of the research. Each participant will arrange the materials needed for the presentation and discussion within 1m³ space for staging (prints, artefacts, drawings, etc.)

VENUE

Campus Politecnico di Milano, piazza Leonardo Da Vinci, 20133 Milano
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), PhD program Architectural, Urban and Interior Design (AUID)