Call for Papers: Contemporary Construction Sites as Postcolonial Infrastructure: Preliminary Inquiries

A+I Working Paper Series, Issue #04 | Guest Editor: Nuno Tavares da Costa (Dinâmia'CET-Iscte)Abstract Deadline (300 words): 21 September 2026

This issue proposes un certain regard for the construction site, approaching it as an object of inquiry rather than merely the stage following the project before buildings’ completion. In a certain way, one could start asking if something changes in architectural history when the construction site overcomes the building as the object of analysis. Or, if our understanding of architecture shifts when we recognise the social, political and economic conditions that shape it? Or even if architectural design continues with the construction phase? In these preliminary inquiries, the construction site appears not simply as a place of building activity, but as a socio-spatial assemblage through which racial labour, logistics and technology become materially entwined. This perspective resonates with Henri Lefebvre's proposition that space is socially produced, putting into consideration the construction site as one of its primary moments.

Please send your 300-word abstracts to nmtca@iscte-iul.pt by 21 September 2026. All accepted authors will be asked to submit a 6,000-word article (including notes) that will be subject to a double-blind peer review. Final publication is expected by May 2027.

More information about the call and the journal: https://archlabour.iscte-iul.pt/working-papers-series-call-for-papers-4/

The Architecture + Infrastructures Working Papers Series (A+I WPS) is an academic journal in the field of architecture. The journal is supported by Dinâmia’CET-Iscte and the research project ArchLabour, coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro (ArchLabour, ERC 101096606).