The Neglected Times of Architecture
Les temps négligés de l'architecture
Published on Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Abstract
By bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives, this conference seeks to unfold the multiple temporal dimensions of architecture and the built environment, to foreground the actions, resources, and actors implicated in these processes, and to explore research methodologies capable of apprehending such dynamics. The event will also feature a dedicated space for the exhibition of audio/visual materials stemming from research engaging with these themes. Submissions may therefore take the form of traditional oral presentations, as well as shorter presentations centred on one or more audio/visual pieces—such as photographs, films, drawings, maps...
Announcement
Les laboratoires Sasha (ULB) et ACTE (ULiège) ont le plaisir de lancer un appel à communications pour les journées d’étude intitulées « Les temps négligés de l’architecture » qui se tiendront à Bruxelles les 17 et 18 mars 2026.
Argument
In 1982, the German philosopher Karsten Harries described a “terror of time” within architecture (1982 : 59). While urban planning is better known for its engagements with the city as a dynamic network of shifting flows, architecture has long been conceived as stable and permanent (Brand, 1995; Jenkins, 2002; Yaneva, 2008; Cairns and Jacobs, 2014). From political and religious monuments built to stand for centuries to the modernist aesthetic that “denies the idea of wear” (Denis and Pontille, 2022: 88; Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, 1993), Western architectural thought has largely aimed to bypass or control the effects of time on the built environment (Till, 2009; Abenia, 2021). Correspondingly, dominant visual conventions within the discipline have tended to portray static, pristine constructions (Wilson, 2005 ; Till, 2000) that foreground the architect’s final intentions. These representations frequently obscure the improvisations required during the building process, as well as the inevitable transformations that occur through everyday use (Hutin et al., 2021). In doing so, they often neutralise the multiple and entangled temporalities (Blunt, Ebbensgaard, and Sheringham, 2020) underlying the built environment.
While the past century witnessed some exceptions—such as architectural approaches that embraced flexibility, adaptability, and transformation (Abramson, 2016)—it was nonetheless largely dominated by a technicist conception of the built environment, oriented toward a “control over space, time, and the user within it” (Schneider and Till, 2007: 8). Heritage doctrines (Poisson, 2015), for their part, have long prioritised the preservation of an original state, effectively freezing the meanings and representations of the built environment in a fixed “time zero”. These conceptions rest on the illusion of a built environment “characterised by perfect order, completeness, immanence and internal homogeneity rather than leaky, partial and heterogeneous entities” (Graham and Thrift, 2007: 10), one purged of the traces and transformations brought about by the passage of time.
Attuning to the Multiple Temporalities of Architecture
In the context of the climate emergency and a broader regime of uncertainty (Beck, 2008)—both of which challenge the notion of inevitable progress and the persistence of the extractivist model (Simay, 2024)—a renewed set of concerns are emerging. These entail for instance an interest in practices historically sidelined by the Industrial Revolution, such as the use of local materials, vernacular knowledge, and opening up to more-than-human environments (Ibid.). Such shifts prompt a reconsideration of architectural and spatialpractices, moving away from static conceptions of the built environment toward more dynamic understandings that embrace the multiple temporalities inherent in the life cycle of buildings and spatial configurations. Other alliances are being formed—attentive not only to human time, but also to the temporalities of materials and non-human entities—recognising their interdependence, agency, resistance, and vulnerability. A growing body of practice and research is now placing these multiple temporalities at their core, aiming to limit various forms of obsolescence—technical, representational, functional, and beyond.
Building as A Process
In response to these challenges, growing attention—both within architectural discourse and within the Humanities and Social Sciences—is focusing on the often-overlooked everyday dynamics of architecture and those who sustain them. This includes those engaged on construction sites (Jounin, 2009; Wall, 2019), who must navigate the inherent unpredictability of building processes and the agency of materials that may resist or diverge from intended outcomes (Yaneva, 2008). It also encompasses the evolving needs of building users as new demands arise in response, for instance, to the uncertainties of climate change. As an example, the French notion of maîtrise d’usage (user expertise) (Hallauer, 2017) encourages architects to engage—early in the design process and over time—with the evolving interactions between humans, non-humans, the built environment, and its immediate surroundings. Moreover, there is an increasing interest in mundane practices of care related to acts of repair and maintenance (Sample, 2016; Strebel, 2011; Mattern, 2021; Denis and Pontille, 2022), as well as in the temporalities of neglect, wear (Rotor et al., 2010), degradation (Cairns and Jacobs, 2014), abandonment (Abenia, 2021), demolition (Howa, 2023), and reuse. These lines of inquiry move beyond purely technical or material understandings of the built environment, situating them within broader social and political frameworks.
Against this backdrop, what constellation of human and non-human actors is activated over time through these evolving conceptions? In what ways, and to what ends, do they engage with the affects, practices, attachments, conflicts, power relations, negotiations, tensions, commitments, or fatigue experienced by those involved? How do they challenge the boundaries between the roles of designer, builder, user, and manager? How are the resources, skills, and labour of other actors—traditionally marginalised within the study of architectural and construction processes—recognised and integrated within these complex temporalities?
Revisiting Tools and Methods
These concerns prompt a critical reflection on how multiple temporalities can be apprehended, questioning, for instance, the limitations of traditional architectural tools. These appear insufficient to grasp the dynamic nature of buildings (Estevez, 2017): the ongoing processes of construction, the unforeseen developments of a project, its transformations (Latour and Yaneva, 2008), or the reality of the building’s life (Leatherbarrow, 2020) and of its users. In response to these limitations, alternative methodological approaches exist. They include, for example, building biographies and social histories (Lepoutre, 2012; Blunt, Ebbensgaard, and Sheringham, 2020), as well as audio/visual methods—such as film, sketching, graphic narration, and inhabited surveys (relevé habité)—employed not only within architectural practice but also across the HSS.
This conference seeks to unfold the multiple temporal dimensions of architecture and the built environment, to foreground the actions, resources, and actors implicated in these processes, and to explore research methodologies capable of apprehending such dynamics. We welcome contributions from a range of disciplinary fields: architecture, social history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, archaeology, geography, urban studies, engineering… In short, any practitioner or researcher interested in sharing methods and insights that promote a temporally attuned understanding of the built environment. Priority will be given to contributions grounded in empirical fieldwork. As the conceptions of time discussed so far largely draw on Western perspectives of the built environment, we also encourage proposals that decentre this view and engage with approaches developed in other cultural and geographical contexts.
The event will also feature a dedicated space for the exhibition of (audio-)visual materials stemming from research engaging with these themes. Submissions may therefore take the form of traditional oral presentations, as well as shorter presentations centred on one or more audio/visual pieces—such as photographs, films, drawings, maps...
Submission Guidelines
Proposals—written in French or English (maximum 5,000 characters including spaces and bibliography)—should be submitted via email to temps.architecture[at]gmail[dot]com
by October 1, 2025.
Please indicate whether your proposal is intended for the oral presentation or for the exhibition. Submissions to both categories are also welcome. Abstracts should include a title and be submitted in .pdf and fully anonymous. A short biography of the author(s) should be included in the email, with mention of academic status and institutional affiliation(s).
Full versions of the selected contributions will be expected by February 2, 2026.
Please note: The conference will be bilingual (French/English), but no simultaneous translation will be provided.
- Timeline
-
October 1, 2025: Deadline for abstract submissions
- November 3, 2025: Notification of accepted proposals
- February 2, 2026: Submission of full papers from selected participants
- March 17 & 18, 2026: Conference in Brussels
Organising Committee
Tiphaine Abenia (ULB), Ludivine Damay (ULB), Pauline Dubois (ULB), Charlotte Gyselynck (ULB), Mélusine Le Brun (ULB), Pauline Lefebvre (ULB), Julie Neuwels (ULiège), Christine Schaut (ULB).
Scientific Committee
Audrey Courbebaisse (ENSA Bretagne), Kent Fitzsimons (ENSA Bordeaux), Michaël Ghyoot (Rotor), Marion Howa (ENSA Paris-Val-de-Seine), Benjamin Leclercq (Université de Strasbourg), Gérald Ledent (UCLouvain), Sarah Melsens (University of Antwerpen), Laetitia Overney (Université du Havre), Maria Anita Palumbo (ENSAP Lille).
Subjects
- Representation (Main category)
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology > Social anthropology
- Periods > Modern
- Society > Sociology > Urban sociology
- Society > Geography > Geography: society and territory
- Mind and language > Representation > Architecture
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Corpus approaches, surveys, archives
Places
- Brussels, Belgium (1000)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Wednesday, October 01, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- temps, architecture, usage
Contact(s)
- Charlotte Gyselynck
courriel : Charlotte [dot] Gyselynck [at] ulb [dot] be
Information source
- Pauline Dubois
courriel : pauline [dot] ij [dot] dubois [at] ulb [dot] be
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« The Neglected Times of Architecture », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, July 02, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14979
