Architectures of Labor

Narratives on industry and cities

Industrial heritage probably reflects the most coherent discourse of continuity between past, present, and future. Industrial sites also encapsulate dichotomic connotations, from places of the avant-garde to derelict spaces, from strong images of empowerment, emancipation, and even propaganda to areas of decay, of marginalized societies. However, as they once were triggers of modernization, industrial sites can be today powerful vectors of change, real engines for social and economic community regeneration.

As a legacy of a culture of labor, since the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, cities and landscapes were profoundly shaped by the factory-city system, creating an industrialized society in which housing, recreation, and places of industrial production were inseparable. In modernity, labor addressed the totality of urban life; it is therefore impossible to understand the city and its architecture without considering it through the lens of labor. But the legacy of industrialization reaches beyond places and objects toward constructing solid social organizations.

Deindustrialization redefines our relationship with landscape and history; the legacy of territories, of social groups, or of knowledge has become very fragile: in the post-industrial era, many of these artifacts and traces were lost.

Former industrial urban areas offer a contested and ambiguous framework for urban redevelopment, raising contradictory reactions: dualist interpretations of gentrification and heritagization, attitudes privileging aesthetic judgments that tend towards museification while failing to grasp the sense of industrial heritage as part of a social mechanism still meaningful for communities are simultaneous with approaches that perceive the power of reuse and the importance of appropriation.

What is ethical to do with the prevailing built and natural environment, the remaining industrial artifacts and the surviving biosphere? How does one research, preserve, or give new meaning to our industrial legacy, collective memories, and material traces while simultaneously embedding the artificial milieu into nature?

We address industrial artifacts, but also less-discussed areas of industrial heritage: the positive or negative inheritance, identity of industrial civilization, archive / documentation and reuse – future development. We welcome papers that deal with:

Historic, architectural, theoretical and memory perspectives on industrial heritage;
Understanding industrial heritage at the intersection of fields: architecture and planning, archaeology, public history, artistic research, geography, sociology, memory studies, museology, tourism studies, cultural studies, political science, anthropology, and ethnology;
Uses and aims of active industry and industrial heritage; Whereto is the city of labor heading?;
Industry as a generator of landscapes in its social, technical, spatial, and cultural components;
Conflicts and responses to industrial decline and closure; Proposals and projects of heritagization;
Industrial heritage as experimental spaces that explore new forms of work and production, or new ways of life, providing the opportunity to relaunch local communities socially and economically;
The role of women in industrialization and in the post-industrial transformation;
Appropriation of industrial heritage and its consideration by society;
Preservation and archive: fragile material and immaterial layers lost in the deindustrialization process; the role of digital archives.

December 15, 2024	preliminary abstract of 250 words to be submitted online https://sita.uauim.ro/call-for-papers
January 13, 2025	preliminary selection of contributors notification by e-mail
April 14, 2025	submission of article for peer-review
June 23, 2025	submission of reviews of current events (conferences, recent publications, exhibitions etc.)

All correspondence will be addressed to sita@uauim.ro, to the attention of Ilinca Păun-Constantinescu (managing editor of the current issue).

Articles

Manuscripts are to be submitted in US English and should range between 5,000-8,000 words, including references, tables, and bibliography. The submission should include the contributor’s name, affiliation and e-mail address, 5-7 keywords, an abstract of 200-250 words, and an extended summary ranging between 700 and 1,000 words (to be translated by our staff and published in Romanian). A reference list will be included at the end of the paper. Illustrations (.tiff or .jpg format, min. 300 dpi at printed size) must be provided separately, and their location must be indicated clearly throughout the paper. A full list of figure captions is to be provided at the end of the article (including figure number, description, and source). Authors are responsible for securing the rights to reproduce and publish all graphic material.

Reviews

Proposals should range between 1,000-2,000 words.

Citation guide

For notes (as footnotes) and reference list, please use The Chicago Manual of Style, “Notes and bibliography” style (for details and examples, see https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html).

File format

All contributors are kindly asked to send a Microsoft Word compatible document, with minimal formatting.