About Conference

Call for papers

Building on the first conference ‘In search of an Identity’, the second Blurred Boundaries conference delves into how culture, nature, and human values influence architectural design. Amidst climate change, technological shifts, and cultural disruptions, this conference engages interdisciplinary experts to rethink and redefine architecture's role in addressing cultural dimensions for a sustainable future.

All interested academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students are invited to submit papers in the following themes. The themes have been broadly grouped as follows.

Subthemes

The Place of “knowledge and perception”

This theme focuses on the creation of knowledge.

Wisdom of “being” in the world comes by the perception of knowledge. Over the years various terms from indigenous to modern have been referred to that offer a wisdom of looking at the phenomenal world and envisioning any action of creating a habitat. Do such value based actions convey reverence, continuation of acquired knowledge of existence and create a sacred, religious, cultural, symbolic experiences of landscapes? Does memory mean only of the individual or of family, community, seasons, geography and even those aspects that are intangible? Is sustainable development inherently integrated in this wisdom? Do we need to invent techniques of drawings, documentations to capture the subtle aspects of this wisdom and how should those be represented? How does local - global dichotomy feature in this? How can this acquired or collective wisdom of humanity be envisioned for addressing contemporary global challenges related to climate, culture and people?

Keywords:

The Place of “Processes” in creating Cultural Landscapes

This theme focuses on the ‘processes’ which lead to the formation of habitats for people. We are interested in knowing the nature of ‘action’ that one undertakes for expressing culturally sensitive landscapes.

How is the process of nurturing a place informed by patrons, stakeholder participation or by service providers? Does the process of building a culturally sensitive habitat include community’s wisdom and addresses the policies framed by governments or other agencies of planning and execution? Does the process become inclusive in spirit when it is a top-down approach? Does a bottom-up approach or a grounded approach inform the process of creation of habitat more sensitively? Does the process only involve a master designer as a service provider to a patron or does it require participation and collaboration of diverse users to conceive an expression of a cultural product? Can processes be ever standardized? How should processes of designing, interventions, planning, execution be seen in the ever changing world of technology, aspirations of people and climate based challenges? How can sustainable development goals be responded to while thinking about processes? How can academic institutions help in sensitizing future professionals or experts to understand the depth of ‘processes’ required for nurturing cultural landscapes? This theme is intended to express the mentioned concerns.

Keywords:

The Place of appropriate “Intervention”

This theme focuses on the idea of ‘intervention’ done by a designer.

What is the role of policies, planning and designing for conceiving appropriate intervention on cultural landscapes? How would contemporary policies of planning and designing help to address current concerns of global climate crisis and related built environment issues, information explosion and rapid changes in technology? How should intervention be conceived and applied if a designer happens to be from another context in terms of sensibilities or values or skill sets? What should infrastructural development mean for places having rich traditions of culture, sacrednes, religion or such other intangible value? What sensitivities are demanded from a professional who is compelled to respond to diversity of cultures, geographies and histories? How would sustainable development goals be envisioned and applied to intervene appropriately in a cultural landscape? How can academic institutions and professional bodies collaborate to define an appropriate intervention strategy? This theme is intended to express the mentioned concerns.

Keywords:

The Place of “Technology”

This theme discusses the ‘place of technology’ in the creation of culturally sensitive habitats.

Is technology seen only as a plug-in to undertake an action of building or is it shaped by people, place and time? How does technology shape the choice of materials, processes of doing or constructing, maintaining, refining, renewing, recycling and reuse? How should technology effectively address the contemporary challenges of accelerated rates of changes in construction techniques, aspirations of people, cultural diversities, condensed time cycles for conceiving interventions for diverse or distinct habitats? What are the new challenges and opportunities that Artificial Intelligence or virtual technology may offer when it comes to imagining culture and thereby conceiving an appropriate creation of a habitat? This theme is intended to express the mentioned concerns.

Keywords:

Eligibility

Academicians, Professionals and Students from backgrounds of Architecture, Urban design, sociology, geography, architecture, landscape architecture Planning, Conservation, Anthropology, etc.

Abstracts will be published in the Conference proceedings book, with an ISBN number.

The selected papers will be presented during the conference under the specified themes.

A few handpicked papers will be further published in highly indexed journals (Scopus, Web of Science, UGC CARE).

E-certificates will be awarded to all authors and delegates.