EAHN Thematic Conference
KTH Stockholm 17–19 June 2027
CALL FOR PAPERS
Key dates
ORGANIZATION TEAM
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
RATES AND REGISTRATION
CONTACT
The canon of architectural history is today under critical scrutiny and is being revised from previously neglected perspectives. By highlighting alternative narratives, we are not only rewriting architecture’s historiography—we are reconsidering its very definition. When architecture, for example, failed to capture feminists and other groups working for emancipation and human rights, bureaucracy became an alternative site for architectural work. Questions of power, equity, and ethics began to be raised in relation to the policies regulating the materiality of everyday life, and alternatives implemented through design.
This conference investigates bureaucracy in architecture as a site of struggles for spatial solidarity and, as such, an essential part of the discipline. To establish and secure democracy and solidarity in society, law and bureaucracy are needed. In processes of emancipation, the principle of self-liberation is closely entwined with socio-regulatory frameworks (Koselleck 2002). Highlighting an oft-concealed sphere in the production of architecture, spanning from concepts to design to the construction site, this conference aims to theorize and map a space of radical bureaucracies in architecture.
“Radical” here refers to the act of advocating social change, while “bureaucracies” are understood as regulatory techniques that often covertly control the built environment. The conference will investigate radical bureaucracy as a practice that endeavors to change the control mechanisms of the built environment—architecture’s invisible infrastructure. Instead of following Max Weber, who held bureaucracy to be a “rational institution” and the opposite of the aesthetic, imaginary, and emotional, the conference takes it to be a site of speculation, experimentation, and the creation of alternative lifeworlds.
A broad literature exists that complicates Weber’s notion of bureaucracy as a dehumanizing, rational institution and highlights other perspectives, including those of “guerillas in the bureaucracy” (Needleman & Emerson Needleman 1974), “irrational rationality” (Ritzer 1993), appraisals of bureaucracy in a turbo-capitalist world (de Guy 2000), and the view of bureaucracy not only as political decisions materialized in the “bureau” but also as practices that create politics (Lipsky 1980).
Today, we can speak of a new field of research at the intersection of the two disciplines of architecture and bureaucracy, which includes studies such as The Bureaucracy of Beauty (Dutta 2008), Architecture’s Red Tape (Sigge 2018), “Creative Uncertainty” (Ross 2020), the conference “Architecture and Bureaucracy” (2019), Building Materials (Lloyd Thomas 2021), the special issue “The Puzzle of Architecture and Bureaucracy” (Architectural Histories 65 2022), and the conference “Architecture and the Power of Bureaucracy” (Vienna 2025). However, scholarly examination of bureaucracy in architecture still lacks intersectional perspectives and analyses of gender, class, and race. Building on earlier research, the conference focuses on emancipation and social change, expanding the study of bureaucracy to include as-yet-unmapped activities such as full-scale experiments, bodily investigations, and relational practices.
Bureaucracy has its etymological ground in the handcrafted object. Bureau was an old, heavy, woven woolen cloth originating in the city of Bruges, which has transformed since the Middle Ages (Fleischer 2026). The production methods and skills of making a bureau are rooted in gendered knowledge with a long historical tradition. First applied to that which was used to cover the desk, later this term came to stand for the physical furniture, the “bureau,” that was then scaled up to refer to spaces and agencies. The conference picks up on this thread and traces it back to its origin—the handicraft and the making—only to then transcend both the object and the space to incorporate relations, practices, affects, and bodies. It asks: How can bureaucratic processes be studied as an architectural making that involves corporeal events and investigates the possibilities of bodies and spaces?
This conference contributes to international research by both applying gender theory, among other perspectives, to a historiographical study of (radical) bureaucracies in architecture, and bringing together aesthetics, politics, and place. We invite papers examining emancipatory work in architectural bureaucracy—in the state apparatus as well as outside—and welcome papers that take a longer historical perspective. In a time of deregulation and a diminishing spatial democracy, architectural history gains new urgency in providing examples and perspectives that risk falling into oblivion.
References
Paul du Guy, In Praise of Bureaucracy. Weber Organization, and Ethics (London: Sage, 2000)
Ricardo Costa Agarez, Fredie Floré, and Rika Devos (eds.), “Architecture and Bureaucracy” (special collection), Architectural Histories, Vol. 65, 2022.
Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility (New York: Routledge, 2007)
Rasmus Fleischer, Byråernas guldålder (Stockholm: Riksbankens jubileumsfond, 2026)
Reinhart Kosseleck, The practice of conceptual history. Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002)
Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy. Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980)
Katie Lloyd Thomas, Building Materials. Material Theory and the Architectural Specification (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021)
Martin L. Needleman & Carolyn Emerson Needleman, Guerillas in the Bureaucracy. The Community Planning Experiment in the United States (New York: Wiley, 1974)
Georg Ritzer, McDonaldization of society. An investigation Into the Changing Character of Contemporary SocialLife (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 1993)
Liam Ross, “Creative Uncertainty” in K. Cupers, C. Gabrielsson och H. Mattsson (eds.), Neoliberalism on the Ground (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2020)
Erik Sigge, Architecture’s Red Tape. Government Building Construction in Sweden, 1963-1973 (Stockholm: Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, 2017)
CALL FOR PAPERS
In the well-known article from 1947, “The Architecture of Bureaucracy and the Architecture of Genius,” Henry-Russell Hitchcock establishes the “genius” and the “bureaucrat” as two categories in post-war architecture. Hitchcock, like Max Weber, viewed bureaucracy as separate from the creative human being, establishing a split between the rational bureaucrat and the creative personality. This image has followed us to this day. Contrary to this standpoint, the conference welcomes contributions that examine bureaucracy as a field for speculation, experimentation, and the creation of alternative worlds.
A broad range of intersectional perspectives on bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy have been formulated outside the discipline of architecture. For example, the communication scholar Karen Ashcraft discusses an “organized dissonance” that brings emotionality to rationality, while also shifting the assumption that bureaucracy requires consistency (Ashcraft 2001). Others describe bureaucracy as malleable “to incorporate cross-cultural values, harnessed to safeguard human rights, and restructured to be more gender-inclusive” (Stivers & DeHart-Davis 2021).
Despite the research gap on the topic in architecture, the discipline has a rich history of radical work within its bureaucracy, both from within the state or public authority and through extra-parliamentary actions or informal regulations structuring collective building and community work. Architectural activism foregrounding topics such as disability, ergonomics, and the rethinking of social reproduction has played an essential role in shaping the architectural discipline. The conference aims to broaden the historiography of these practices.
We invite papers drawing on examples from diverse geographical contexts in the Global South and North. The chronology is not limited; instead, the conference welcomes papers that take a long historical perspective as well as cases within recent history. We look for situated studies that explore original archives (drawings, models, reports, digital media, protocols, and other forms of bureaucratic documentation) and use experimental methods such as oral history, witness seminars, or other performative techniques. We encourage empirical case studies, artistic research, and innovative theoretical implications. However, the conference is also open to reflections on the concept of an emancipatory “radical bureaucracy” in the form of a roundtable (see below).
Contributions may include, but are not limited to, papers investigating:
- The physical outcome of bureaucratic work, such as the design of buildings and environments. What spatial and aesthetic articulations did bureaucratic practices take? And, conversely, how did design, aesthetics, and spatial organization impact on bureaucracies in architecture?
- The historiography of groups or individuals doing groundbreaking emancipatory work that paved the way for new regulations aiming to liberate groups beyond the normative, valorized “citizen” of the state or territory (i.e., people with disabilities, women, children, migrants, etc.).
- Case studies showing tensions in bureaucracy (mediations between different ethical positions or between disciplines such as architecture and planning), architectural activism within state bureaucracy, or the conflicts and overlaps between extra-parliamentary actions and official bureaucracy.
- Methods and techniques developed and used in bureaucracy to empower users, such as full-scale experiments in controlled environments (e.g., laboratories) and in real-life situations (i.e., urban actions).
- Feminist practices within architectural bureaucracy, in the state apparatus as well as the private and civic sector.
- Bureaucracy as a tool for societal change. Case studies that reveal bureaucracy’s role in the transitions between emancipatory ideas and their realization in the world.
- Contemporary history studies that reflect on and analyze the historical processes shaping today’s deregulations of the spatial landscape, which are diminishing spatial democracy. How can we historicize architectural bureaucracy at a time when building codes and other regulations are de- or reconstructed?
Roundtable
Shorter position papers on the concept of an emancipatory radical bureaucracy. How can the concept be understood and used? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the concept? How can the concept be framed theoretically and used as an analytical concept in historical work?
Proposals shall include an abstract of max 250 words and a bio of 125 words (per author) in one PDF and sent to info@radicalbureaucracy.com no later than November 15, 2026.
References
Karen Ashcraft, “Organized dissonance: Feminist bureaucracy as hybrid form”, Academy of Management Journal 44, 2001, 1301-1322.
Henry-Russell Hitchcock, “The Architecture of Bureaucracy and the Architecture of Genius”, Architectural Review 101, 1947, 3-6.
Camilla Stivers & Leisha DeHart-Davis, ”Introduction to the Symposium Issue on Reapprising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century”, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance 5, 2022, 77-83.
KEY DATES
24/8 2026 Call for papers opens
15/11 2026 Call for papers closes
14/12 2026 Notification of speakers
15/3-17/5 2027 Registration
17-19/6 2027 Conference dates
ORGANIZATION TEAM
Helena Mattsson
Professor, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm, General Chair
Sara Brolund de Carvalho
Lecturer and PhD student, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
Meike Schalk
Professor, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Helena Mattsson, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
Sara Brolund de Carvalho, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
Meike Schalk, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
Isabelle Doucet, University of Sheffield, Sheffield
Janina Gosseye, Delft University of Technology, Delft (EAHN)
Elke Krasny, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Jennifer Mack, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm
Erik Sigge, LTH School of Architecture, Lund
Léa-Catherine Szacka, University of Manchester, Manchester (EAHN)
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
To be announced.
RATES AND REGISTRATION
To be announced.
CONFERENCE LOCATIONS
To be announced.
CONTACT
COLOPHON
The conference visual identity is designed by Maryam Fanni and inspired by the visual conventions of zoning plans. The display typeface used is FlordeRuina Semilla designed by Felipe Sanzana. This website is developed together with Vincent Orback, and managed by Sara Brolund de Carvalho.