Issue 8: Call For Proposals

Outside the bounds of the exact sciences and the Cartesian grid, magic denotes that which can’t be named or confined. If space and time are fundamental coordinates of everyday environments, magic distorts the banal with spells, incantations, prayers, and speculation. Situated beyond the dizzying pace of modernity, it remains as a highly structured means of world making.

Actually, magic is the beyond: it is always just out of reach. It is un-instagrammable and delirious. It is the ancient Russian hut of Baba Yaga, supported on chicken legs that walks the forest depths. It is colored glass that moulds the human soul, floating skyscrapers that shape a physics-defying future, and the auratic glow that suffuses megachurches and McDonalds arches. It’s carving holes into skyscrapers for the passage of dragons and arranging buildings by tossing handfuls of earth. Magic is just around every corner.

What is an architecture of the unknowable, the unseen, the forgotten, the extra-ordinary? Does building design start and end in “the making of a room”? Where are the quotidien miracles promised by so many manifestos and hallucinated on tracing paper? Where’s the magic in the industrial alchemy that coerces base materials into buildings? And how can we discover genius loci in daylight simulations and VR?

This year’s issue of Room One Thousand seeks to make magic visible through speculative essays, design proposals, and short thought pieces on and around the theme. We call for provocative contributions within and adjacent to the field of architecture, and which push to the reaches of the occult, un-sanctioned, enchanted and bewitching. Submissions should contain previously unpublished work and follow the format outlined here.

Submission Information:

~ We accept both complete submissions and proposals for long form 3,000-5,000 word essays, short thought pieces of 400-500 words, and image- based submissions with brief captions.

~ For design proposals, please include at least one draft image and a brief description of the project’s relevance to the theme of magic, or sim.

Email submissions to: roomonethousand@gmail.com with the subject line “RM1008 CFP Response.” All submissions are due by midnight PST on November 26th, 2019.