The last few months alone have seen cataclysmic storms devastate the Caribbean, the Southeast United States, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, while intense wildfires have scorched Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, Southern Europe, North Africa, and Central and South Africa. The effects of climate change, it would seem, are ramping up. And, alongside extreme weather, related resource-driven conflicts are multiplying across the world, from Syria to Somalia. With more than half the world’s population living in cities, a majority of which are along waterways and coastlines, built environments not designed to accommodate rising tides or other environmental crises are being tested. In short, we live in a world marked by disasters. The foundations upon which we build are shaking; the ground has been revealed as unstable. What is the role of architecture in all this? How does it contribute to disaster scenarios? How can it mitigate the effects of a warming planet?

But this climate of disaster is not confined to extreme weather. From the rise of contemporary far-right movements around the world, to the re-emergent threat of nuclear conflict, the geopolitical landscape is as volatile as it has been for over a generation, according to the the secretary general of NATO. Meanwhile, global wealth inequality is worse now than it has been in centuries, with half of the world’s wealth belonging to the richest 1%. Likewise, architecture is implicated in this, with urban development serving as one of the primary terrains for the expenditure of surplus capital. As cities around the world experience mass housing shortages, heralded works of architecture lie unoccupied—empty depositories of (often dirty) money. This does not happen in isolation—urban development, climate change, and geopolitical transformations feed off one another, forming a complex mesh of causal relations.

On the heels of the release of the first issue of Ed, Archinect’s new print journal, we’re already gearing up for issue two, which looks squarely at the myriad disasters facing the world today. We want to know about architecture’s complicity in crisis, and its potential role as mitigator or even as solution. At the same time, we are vitally aware that architecture does not operate independently and its agency is limited, so we are also looking for critical responses to essentializing and reductive discourses about disaster relief and humanitarian architecture. Alongside responses to ‘disasters’ in the world, we’re interested in ‘disasters’ within architecture. How can the profession change its self-image to cope with a changing world? How can it survive as its younger members are saddled with crippling debt and stagnant incomes? Is there such a thing as disasters within architectural thought itself?

Archinect is accepting written submissions of around 1500-2000 (max.) words (Chicago-style citation), as well as visual or multimedia projects. Images, if included, should be 300dpi. The deadline for submissions is January 30, 2018 (extended from January 16) at 11:59 pm (PST).

For more information, and to submit, fill out this form.

Still have questions? Ask Nicholas.