Call for papers. Architectures of Power and Spaces of Confinement Representations of the City, Control, Retreat and Memory

2026-05-25

Call for papers. ABATON. Figuración, representación e imágenes de la arquitectura

Architectures of Power and Spaces of Confinement

Representations of the City, Control, Retreat and Memory

Throughout history, architecture and the city have not only constituted the physical framework of power, but have functioned as active instruments of its figuration, legitimation, administration and exercise. Palaces, protected residences, fortresses, bunkers, prisons, segregated neighborhoods, ghettos, ceremonial squares, ephemeral architectures, planned urban complexes and surveillance spaces have served to stage authority, regulate movement, order bodies, produce obedience, define exclusions and construct political imaginaries of security, threat, retreat or domination.

 

This dossier of ABATON. Figuration, Representation and Images of Architecture proposes to address architecture and the city as material and visual devices of power, with particular attention to their forms of confinement, control, segregation, withdrawal, theatricalization and critical resignification. The call is organized around a broad field, ranging from courtly cultures and architectures of defense, refuge or retreat to the urbanisms of segregation, contemporary authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, ceremonial stagings of authority, and current processes of memory, heritage-making and critical revision of these spaces.

The aim of the dossier is to analyze how architecture has been represented, inhabited, imagined and repurposed as a form of power: as a space of control or repression; as a refuge or protected residence; as a segregated or hierarchized city; as a political and ceremonial theater; as ephemeral propaganda and representational architecture; or as conflicted heritage subjected to processes of memory, reinterpretation, musealization, destruction, concealment or resignification. From this perspective, the dossier seeks to open a field of transversal reflection across art history, architectural history, visual culture, urban studies, political history, heritage studies and memory studies.

Original contributions are invited that address, among others, the following thematic lines:

  • Architecture of power, spaces of control, repression and retreat: shelters, bunkers, fortresses, prisons, protected residences, fortified palaces, spaces of isolation, defensive architectures and sites of power's withdrawal.
  • Urbanism and the city: ghettos, segregated neighborhoods, collective housing complexes, planned cities, colonies, surveillance zones, interior borders, spaces of exclusion, urban political theater and devices of social control at the city scale.
  • The city and the ephemeral, refigured architecture of power: performative ceremonial, triumphal entries, parades, tribunes, balconies, squares, temporary stagings, visual propaganda, political festivities, commemorative architectures and stagings of authority.
  • Memory, heritage-making and critical resignification of architectures of power and confinement: conservation, musealization, ruin, destruction, reuse, public debate, uncomfortable heritages, sites of memory and new critical readings of spaces linked to power, repression or segregation.

Proposals that engage with the relationship between image, space and power will be particularly welcome, as will those integrating comparative methodologies, interdisciplinary approaches or analyses focused on visual sources — engraving, photography, cinema, press, cartography, literature, propaganda, digital media or archives — to study the construction, circulation and reception of these architectures and urban landscapes.

Submission of manuscripts Manuscripts must be unpublished and must conform to the journal's editorial guidelines.

Deadline for article submission: 31 August 2026.

Languages Contributions will be accepted in Spanish, English, Italian, French and Portuguese.