VIRTUAL TRADITIONS
Session Host: Nottingham Trent University
“Virtual Traditions” is the theme of the seventeenth conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) to be held in Nottingham, United Kingdom from September 3-6, 2020. This conference will explore how the mutual influences between the virtual and the traditional reconfigure new structures of communities, societies, and cities — extending and connecting built spaces. In an era defined by social media and online interaction, new agents manipulate traditions, values, myths, borders, and even the legitimacy of the built environment in virtual space. Scientific innovation, data-mining, algorithms, and spatial and digital modeling have thus led to new methods of interpretation and mechanisms of decision-making that force a reconsideration of the link between buildings and people, culture and its consumers. The organizers of IASTE 2020 Nottingham invite participants to revisit the notions, concepts, and practices of tradition at a time when virtual and mobile interaction increasingly dictate the terms of everyday life, at home, at work, and in the public sphere. Three tracks will foster this discourse: Theorizing the Virtual and the Traditional in the Built Environment; The Socio-Spatial Traditions of Everyday Life in Changing Landscapes; and Tradition, Space, and Professional Practice in the Built Environment at Times of Transition.
IASTE is an independent, academically-centered non-profit association that was founded in 1988. The association’s activities have included the publication of a semi-annual journal, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and an ongoing Working Paper Series. Our biennial conferences have been held at locations as varied as Oxford, Tunis, and Bangkok on themes concerned with sustainability, development and the built environment, and issues of culture and identity. Our conferences typically include nearly 400 participants representing a wide range of academic disciplines such as architecture, architectural history, art history, anthropology, archaeology, folklore, geography, history, landscape architecture, planning, political science, and urban studies.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Scholars from relevant disciplines are invited to submit a 500-word abstract and short biography