Interiors Forum (Scotland): call for papers
Thinking Inside the Box
March 2007 at
The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Architecture & Design
Overview
Interiors is a slippery discipline. Among all designed artefacts, Interiors
themselves are uniquely ephemeral and hard to define. The practice of
Interiors is relatively unregulated. The History of Interiors is patchy and
contested. The Theoretical basis of Interiors is largely unexplored in
comparison to those of other disciplines. How, therefore, might we speculate
about the role, validity and purpose of Interiors in the 21st century?
Interiors practitioners, academics, researchers, and policy makers require a
critical platform in which Interior Design is central to the debate, rather
than, as is usual, on the periphery of other design and architectural symposia.
A new body, Interiors Forum (Scotland), exists in order to promote such
speculation about the future (and therefore the past and the present) of
Interiors in Scotland and beyond.
Interiors Forum (Scotland) is a body run jointly between five of the six
Interiors programmes at University level in Scotland at:
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee
Edinburgh College of Art
Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow Metropolitan University
Napier University, Edinburgh
Interiors Forum (Scotland), in collaboration with the Lighthouse, Scotland‘s
Centre for Architecture and Design, Glasgow, are proposing a unique two day
international conference in March 2007.
The unifying theme of the conference and the exhibition will be: ‘Thinking
Inside the Box: Interiors in the 21st Century: New Visions, New Horizons &
New Challenges. The conference will include presentations from keynote
speakers, researchers and industrial & academic practitioners, an
accompanying exhibition and published conference proceedings.
The Conference
The conference will be of direct interest to educational visionaries, hybrid
makers, provocative thinkers, practitioners, policy makers, design
organisations, students, teachers, community groups, and researchers, all of
whom share a passion for and a curiosity about the discipline of Interiors.
The conference will last for two days. The main theme of the symposium will
be addressed by keynote speakers of international standing at the beginning
and the end of the event.
In the intervening period, researchers, practitioners, and educationalists
will have the opportunity to deliver papers or poster presentations to the
conference that will be selected from proposal submitted to IF(S) (see call
for papers below).
These presentations will be divided into four simple themes:
What is Interiors?
Status, identity, professional boundaries, local and global, Multi &
Interdisciplinary Thinking
Who is Interiors for?
Demographics, audience, client and user, practitioner, student
How do we design Interiors?
Drawing and making, digital and analogue, space/object, examples of good
practice.
Why do we design Interiors?
Theory and practice, history and theory, abstraction and sensuality,
sustainability, inclusivity.
The proceedings of the conference will be published under the Lighthouse
imprint after the event
Conference Presentation format
Language - English is the conference language. Please remember that English
is a second or third language for many of our authors and readers. We
encourage authors to write and speak in a direct, comfortable style for
clear, understandable papers.
20 minutes oral presentation.
Data Show – PC compatible (slide presentation as well as overhead
presentation will not be admitted)
Completed paper of up to 4000 words, conforming to the template that is to
be supplied to selected authors.
Costs
Attendance at the conference will cost approximately £195.00.
Call For Papers
IF(S) are seeking proposals for papers from practitioners, educationalists,
theorists and thinkers who are passionate about Interiors and are interested
in addressing that address the themes of the conference.
Because this type of event is new, we welcome speculative proposals in,
initially, an abstract format, from which the final presentations will be
selected.
Abstract Submission Guidelines
The conference and accompanying publication will comprise a selection of
refereed papers of up to 4000 words that address the themes stated below:
What is Interiors?
Status, identity, professional boundaries, local and global, Multi &
Interdisciplinary Thinking
Who is Interiors for?
Demographics, audience, client and user, practitioner, student
How do we design Interiors?
Drawing and making, digital and analogue, space/object, examples of good
practice.
Why do we design Interiors?
Theory and practice, history and theory, abstraction and sensuality,
sustainability, inclusivity.
In anticipation of selection, we invite self-contained abstracts of up to
300 words that outline your aims, scope, and conclusions. In the abstract
1) State the theme of the proposed paper.
2) Provide evidence for the argument that you will present to reach the
conclusion.
3) State the structure of the argument and show how you will develop it.
4) Show how the evidence and the argument will lead to a contribution.
Follow the abstract with a list of up to five keywords that describe the
paper. Select key words from the list of keywords. Authors may substitute
one keyword of their own choice for a keyword that is not on the list.
Abstracts will be peer reviewed blind. Therefore, provide a digital document
(Microsoft word preferred). The first page to contain the abstract itself,
the second to supply name, institutional affiliation, contact details, and a
200 word cv.
Deadlines
Submission of abstracts (max 500 words) –01/10/06
Submit Abstracts to: [log in to unmask]
Notification of acceptance of abstracts –01/11/06
Submission of full papers –10/01/07
Publication ready papers – 15/02/07
The Publication
The publication of the conference proceedings will be published under the
Lighthouse imprint, and will therefore carry and ISBN number. The Lighthouse
and the reviewing board of the IF (S) will have final editorial control over
the contents of the publication.
The publication will also contain a commentary about the exhibition that
will run concurrently with the symposium. This will include an essay
submitted by each of the partner institutions of IF(S) outlining their
approach to each of the four conference themes.
The publication will thus constitute a comprehensive, challenging, peer
reviewed, survey of some of the issues central to Interiors as a
professional and academic discipline. This publication will therefore
challenge the existing plethora of ‘style’ publications that dominate
writing about Interiors; and it will appeal to the substantial audience who
are seeking more substantial writing on the subject.
The exhibition
The exhibition is the platform upon which the members of IF(S) will state
their views regarding the future and the potential of Interiors.
Because the members of IF(S) are educationalists, the contents of the
exhibition will be work produced by the undergraduate students who study
interiors at one of the Scottish Universities. However, this exhibition is
not a glorified degree show. Instead, a curated exhibition will articulate
diverse and challenging propositions of what Interiors might be.
Student work from all levels between first and final year will exhibited and
used to explain how the awareness and skills of an Interiors student and
future practitioner are built up over a long period of time. Student work
from all levels of all five partners of IFS will be exhibited in order to
articulate the different philosophies that drive this development from new
student into practitioner.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a short catalogue in which the five
partners of IF(S) will explain their approaches. This will be produced under
the Lighthouse imprint.
Further information
A website containing more information about ‘Thinking inside the Box’ is
under construction, and will be online soon. In the meantime, if you have
questions please contact:
Alex Milton,
Edinburgh College of Art,
Lauriston Place
Edinburgh EH3 9DF
+44 131 221 6132
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