Call for Papers: Volume II Issue 2: End
Editors: Petar Bojanić, Snežana Vesnić
Prior to it being achieved and becoming an object, the concept of ‘end’ – ever before us and with us – should probably be thought of as ending, as preparation or clearing territory about and for architecture and philosophy. Perhaps all that ever remains to be done is the preparation of the end or to think the construction of the end of thought as we know it ‘between’ architecture and philosophy.
The “and” or and that holds together architecture and philosophy necessarily transforms into and comes to an end, the end of the and, the end of any future and, and then the “end of the beginning and the end of the end” (Eisenman). How does ‘end’ hold and break the connection between architecture & philosophy? Does ‘end’ have its symbol and shorthand, does it have its time and space (end is perhaps the only, briefest possible concept in which space and time are inseparable and indistinguishable)? Does ‘end’ have its own architecture and its own philosophy? Is it really a concept? Is it the final concept that abolishes any potential new concept? And what of the older meaning of the word ‘end’ (Ende), equal in meaning to ‘place’ (Ort), what is end as place (Heidegger)? What happens to the relation and connection between architecture and philosophy when they are mediated by an infinite ‘end’?
Architecture – End (Place) – Philosophy: what comprises the future of this tripartite order? Or, perhaps even of any future, any concept of the future and any concept as such? Forty years after the publication of a programmatic text by Peter Eisenman, “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End” (1984), which sought and found in the word end a newness beyond any conceptual novelty (“an other ‘timeless’ space of invention”), today we look for the attributes and models of this end (perfect end, absolute end, end of history, from Thomas Aquinas to Ed Ruscha), we protect the projective force of that which abolishes all future concepts; we call for yet another reconstruction of the event or realization of the concept of end. What we are interested in is the certainty of the most uncertain concept that has ever existed in the histories of the West or histories of writing, as well as histories of building in general. The end that really does not have an end, simultaneously closing everything finite and ephemeral, it operationalizes basic architectural protocols: the end as a projective end or projective motion or the ultimate incorporation of the projective mind in the material; the transfer of the concept into something definitive and definite, into its own end and past (perfect, perfection); the transfer across limits and reach for the ultimate possible limit of the extreme and excessive; finally, the completion of the multitude into a whole, which paradoxically remains endless or unending. The end as movement beyond all destruction and termination.
What task is reserved for thinking at the end of architecture and philosophy? Is that ‘end’, so ill-capable of truly being ‘end’, able to be the beginning of anything (Hegel)?
Submissions should be emailed to khorein@ifdt.bg.ac.rs.
Submission deadline: November 15, 2024
For the following call for papers visit: