Call for Papers 22

Last year, in 2019, Tirana approached its 100th anniversary as the capital of Albania. Comparing photos of a bucolic Tirana in 1920 with what one sees from Polis University’s fourth floor today, inevitably raises doubts about the endurance of design, while conspicuously evincing the fluctuating tendency of what constitutes a norm in a world continuously oscillating between endogenous equilibrium (desired or imagined) and exogenous menaces.

The objective of this issue is to draw current research and design practices, as well as theoretical speculations on the topic of uncertainty and non-normativity in multiple scales and contexts, in and from the city of Tirana, with the latter understood as a dis-position, a tendency to change position, and as an opposition to normativity as «distinguishing adequate from inadequate, correct from incorrect, or better from worse in the context of a particular situation.

The significance of addressing such topic from Tirana – with the certainty that these phenomena can be find also in International situations such as the sprawl emergence in the Italian countryside or the severe informal development of eastern metropolis such as New Delhi or Beijing – is that this city is a harsh and unmediated example of what is already a global symptom: a strong contrast between an ideology of normativity on the one hand, and its actual impossibility on the other; between the aim for responsible design practices and ethical boundaries impossible to overcome; between education and merciless economic reason, between standardized production and mass-customized desires, between daily ideologies of inclusivity and an increasingly predominant exclusivity, between plain design narratives and irresponsible political decision-making; between expensive normativity affordable only by few, and not-so-cheap sub-normativity for the many; between frenzied building development and destruction of urban artefacts; between ’glittery’ shapes in the centre and chaotic sprawl in the periphery; between style and non-style. What happens in-between is dimmed as ‘uncertain’, intended as a dis-position, a tendency to change position.

The upcoming number of the Scientific Journal FORUM A+P aims precisely to enhance such uncertainty from the perspective of different practices such as design, architecture, sociology, urban and environmental studies, theory and history, innovation, writing, research and pedagogy, among others. The purpose here is not so much to propose another agenda, but rather to juxtapose these practices with what is already happening in international contexts ‘out there’, and speculate how they can potentially inflect, positively or negatively, this ‘out there’: the un-reason of non-normativity and the commodification of normativity.

Submission Guidelines

 FORUM A+P invites submissions of original research from scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students to be considered for the upcoming OPEN issue. From theoretical and empirical research, to research methodologies, critical reviews, and case studies, this OPEN call welcomes all work that seeks to establish critical areas of research, development, and reflections towards the topic of Uncertainty and Non-Normativity.

 The Journal welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meets the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. After the abstract acceptance by the Editorial Committee, all articles will be single-blind peer-reviewed by the International Scientific Committee.

By submitting your article, the author agrees to any necessary originality checks your contribution may have to undergo during the peer-review and production processes. FORUM A+P will not accept for review any text or design that has been previously published, in whole or in part. Nor will we consider for publication any work concurrently under consideration for publication elsewhere.
For further specification concerning the authors’ guidelines, you can consult the dedicated page on our website.

Important Dates

Deadline for first submissions: 21 June 2020

Deadline for submissions after peer-review process: 29 July 2020

 Paper Guidelines

All the submitted papers must contain the following information

• Submitter’s contact details (Full first and family name(s), email, phone number, country)
• Presenting author’s and co-Authors’ details (Full first and family name(s), postal address, mail)
• Affiliation details: Institution/Company/University, city, country;
• Paper title
• Paper Subtitle
• Abstract text: abstract must not exceed 300 words
• Full paper text: papers must be within 7.000/10.000 words excluding references
• Keywords: up to 5 keywords may be provided
• Reference style: APA

Every author should provide an anonymized copy of his submission to be included in the peer-review process. Further information regarding this can be found in the
authors’ guidelines document.

At the following address, you can find a Guidelines to submit your
paper (link)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rLgW9bBwm2UHEe78_3SuvZN5kRXM0Q31

Manuscripts can be sent to: forumap@universitetipolis.edu.al or through the dedicated form in this page.