EKA Arh CONFERENCE 2024

Building Systems

10 October 2024
Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Architecture, Põhja pst 7, Tallinn, Estonia

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Faculty of Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts together with the scientific committee of the EKA Arh conference 2024 invites you to submit an abstract on the topic of building systems. Submitted abstracts should relate to high quality research describing original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, or theoretical work in all areas of spatial planning and design. Best papers will be published in the EKA Faculty of Architecture Proceedings and authors will be invited to present at the conference on the 10th of October in Tallinn.

Scope of the conference

With the green turn and accelerating digitalisation and automation we are creating more and more complex systems that govern our lives and influence our environment in unprecedented ways. Building these complex systems – ecological, digital, social – do we leave enough room for subjectivity, or are we still stuck in modernist thinking, trying to engineer the world? Systemic solutions have created systemic problems in the past. The system built housing of the postwar era is deteriorating and substantially contributing to the climate crisis. At the same time we have a housing shortage in many growing cities. While fixing the mistakes of the past, we need to be sure not to make even bigger ones today, when digital platforms make innovations rapidly scalable. How can these complex systems be directed in a meaningful way? Do we need fully automated design and construction systems designed by good architects? Or should we leave the industrial and capitalist model behind and build social systems of participatory design and construction? Or can these approaches work hand in hand after all, to build systems that accommodate subjectivity and meaning? With “Building Systems” we want to look at the past, present and future of systemic thinking in all scales of the built environment and envision paths forward towards building systems of meaning.

EKA Arh conference is a biannual international peer-reviewed conference held as a satellite of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. The previous iterations have been Space and Digital Reality in 2019 and Innovation and Digital Reality in 2022. The keynotes and papers are published in EKA Faculty of Architecture Proceedings. All the presenters will get a TAB2024 pass.

Keynote speakers:

Construction Systems: Fabio Gramazio, ETH Zürich (Switzerland)

Material Systems: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, KADK (Denmark)

Urban Systems: Andres Sevtsuk, MIT (USA)

Important dates:
Open call: May 6

Submission deadline for abstracts (300-500 characters): June 3
Decision of acceptance of abstracts: June 30

Submission deadline for full papers: August 30
Peer-review feedback: September 30

Conference: October 10
Submission of final text: November 10

Publication: March 2025

Contact:
Head curator: dr Siim Tuksam (EKA)

Abstract submission:
ekaarh.conference@artun.ee

Please forward this information to your colleagues who might be interested.

Contact:
Head curator: dr Siim Tuksam (EKA)
Head of Research
Faculty of Architecture
Estonian Academy of Arts
siim.tuksam@artun.ee
www.artun.ee