When we cross frontiers, what do we meet? Modes of visual, verbal and data communication have brought forth feelings of both awareness and disunity. Across scales, aliens emerge from this discord.

The issue is not only of the alien or non­alien but of negotiated territory where the value of invasive species, hazardous materials and estranged forms comes into question. The enculturation of mobility, tourism, and surveillance is shifting self-perceptions and uprooting grounded relationships. What was once permanent can no longer be taken for granted.

As expanses shrink and technology enables, what aliens do we encounter and what are the rules of engagement? How do aliens operate within design? How are they agents of evocation, protocol, and myth? How are architects alien? What boundaries do we trespass?

ALIEN asks you to consider limits, permeations, the unfamiliar and the strange. Send us your declarations, pleas and confessions. We’re looking for tested stories, ponderings, theories, manifestos, proposals, mappings, interviews, graphics – a wide array of responses that will incite conversation and engage us in ways of seeing the alien in our world and beyond.

Abstracts are due November 14, 2014.

Full submissions are due January 9, 2015. Please limit articles to 3000 words.

Submit at lunchdesignjournal.submittable.com/submit and contact info@lunch.com with questions.

Copies of LUNCH 8 Futures of Sites Unknown and LUNCH 9 In Excess are now available on Amazon.

Lunch is a design research journal edited and designed by students at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Go to UVaLunch.com for past volumes and more information.