Media Building Virtual Conference:
Architecture, Communications and the Built Environment
7-10 July 2021
Hosted by the University of Salford and Northumbria University
Abstract Deadline: 11 April 2021
Since the emergence of the first newspapers, the relationship between place and content has been central to the media’s development. The spatial politics of media production could fundamentally shape its reception and circulation. If ‘the medium is the message’, then this applied equally to where media artefacts were created as to what was contained within them. Publishers quickly understood that, from both a commercial and philosophical perspective, landmark headquarters or publishing plants could help enforce the legitimacy and significance of their enterprises. Thus, structures such as the striking neo-gothic spires of the Chicago Tribune tower or the sleek art-deco exteriors of the Daily Express building in London offered compelling expressions of media power, modernity, and the aesthetics of mass communication, providing what Aurora Wallace describes as a “definable shape…a hook on which to hang some news about the media itself.” At the same time, media buildings became key nodes in the urban geography of communications, complementing editorial efforts to make and remake the modern metropolis.
This virtual conference invites contributions which explore the intersections between architecture, communications, and the built environment. While all papers will be considered, our focus is on print, broadcast, and digital media. We are interested in the relationship between media content and media space, and the ways in which this relationship has changed over time.
Potential topics and case studies include:
The rise and fall of the “newspaper row” (Fleet Street; Park Row; Picayune Place; etc.)
Media power and the modern skyscraper (China Media Group HQ, Beijing; the New York Times building, Manhattan; etc.)
Media cities and mediated cities (Facebook Menlo Park Campus, Silicon Valley; MediaCity, Salford Quays; Media City Park, Dubai; etc.)
Media buildings in popular culture (Superman and the Daily Planet; Janoth Publications and The Big Clock, etc.)
Liminal spaces, private architectures, media publics (blogging and the coffee shop; radical media and the built environment; media cultures in the ‘post-newsroom’ age; etc.)
Reuse, relocation, and the afterlife of media architecture (the Chicago Tribune building the Chicago Bee building, etc.)
Designing media buildings (soft power and media architecture; media buildings and interior design; the ‘newsroom’ as a social and cultural construct; etc.)
Identity, community, and media buildings (the Johnson Publishing building in Chicago, the Daily Forward building in New York, etc.)
Media architecture and the end of empire (Times of India building, Mumbai; National Media Group, Nairobi; Broadcasting House, London; etc.)
We welcome proposals for either individual presentations (c. 20 minutes), or panels (c. 60-90 minutes) in a variety of formats: traditional conference papers, pre-recorded papers, roundtables, scholar-practitioner interviews, etc.
Accounting for the participation of international scholars, the conference will follow an afternoon format, with sessions taking place between 12 and 6pm BST. If you have a preference for appearing earlier or later in the day depending on your own time-zone, please highlight this as part of your abstract submission.
Send abstracts (400 words max), or any questions about format and presentations, to Carole O’Reilly [[log in to unmask]] and E. James West [[log in to unmask]] by 11 April 2021.
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