Peripheries

Architects are now more than ever part of an interdisciplinary context. The emergence of creative art-based practices, film making, post-disaster designs and slum management, as part of the architecture discourse and curriculum, is an indication of how broad architecture has become, and the extent to which it has already merged peripheral practices into its core.

This new volume in the AHRA Critiques Series is a statement about how broad, complex, influential, and, ironically central, architecture has become in the contemporary culture, economy and society, despite the marginal position the profession currently occupies. Peripheries questions and challenges the boundaries of architectural research by bringing together subjects and relevant streams of investigation, some of which rarely feature in architectural research and practice titles.

Divided into four themes, Places of Formation and Insight, Practices at the Edge, People on the Margins and Edge Readings, each section presents a selection of high calibre interdisciplinary research papers, from a range of renowned contributors including Stephen Walker, Gerry Adler, Dana Vais and author Glen Patterson. The volume also includes a Dialogue between Murray Fraser, Christine Boyer and Kim Dovey. Each section interrogates a peripheral aspect of the built environment, and brings to the fore peripheral case studies. Chapters discuss architecture in United States, Lebanon, Egypt, Japan, Romania, and Europe. Hence, the book takes Architectural humanities discussions to new cultures, societies and practices and towards a global level of influence and impact.

Ruth Morrow is Professor of Architecture at SPACE: School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering at Queen's University Belfast.

Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem is an architect and lecturer in Architecture at SPACE: School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast.