calls for articles

on site review 47:restoration and rebuilding

Restoration, reconstruction, replacement.

Rebuilding, redesigning, repairing.

None of these words is unknown, or unusual; we know how to do this.

Life as we know it, as we were trained to navigate through architecture and planning, is done. It will never be the same again, so what are our options now?

We can simply keep going on the paths we know, even although they keep being bombed, or burned, or buried.

We can make something out of nothing, or rather out of things previously considered nothing: rubble, debris, abandoned structures, inhospitable landscapes.

We can do some re-thinking about consumption and class: do we need more buildings, or just better use of buildings.

Is history a viable way to proceed? after all we just saw a twelfth century French cathedral reconstructed in 5 years, eschewing any of the technologies that have developed since 1345. What is the lesson in this?

Proposals please by April 30, 2025. Proposals are outlines that we take very seriously, and tend to hold you to them. And only send a proposal if you are serious about eventually submitting an article (text, drawings, photographs) six weeks later, by June 15, 2025.

Include a brief text description outlining what you wish to say, proposed images and how your submission addresses the overall theme of this issue. Please use our contact form. This form does not accept images, but send your proposal text, we will get back to you by email, and then you can send any images.

Sending material to a journal, or a magazine, is necessarily a collaborative process. You have something to say, we package and present it so you can be read. This means editing for clarity, logic, grammar, spelling. You participate in this, but understand, and don’t be offended, that everything goes through this editorial process. On Site review is not unique in this.

Please forward this link – onsitereview.ca/callforarts to anyone you feel might be interested in contributing to this or any of our discussions.