Guest Editor: Andrew Benjamin, University of Melbourne

 

Are there concepts that hover between philosophy and architecture? The contention behind this issue of Khōrein is that the between is one such concept. Moreover, it is a concept, both through acts of translation, as well as the discovery of synonyms, that denotes the ubiquity of relationality. As a term therefore, it has an inherently critical nature since it enacts the distancing of the forms of individualism – forms that are of necessity mythic – that intrude as much within neoliberal subjectivity as in neoliberal economics. In addition, the failure to think the primacy of relationality has the effect of identifying architecture with a complete unitary object. To attribute centrality to both the between and relationality is to allow for an opening up of architecture such that is no longer axiomatically identified with the presence of buildings, but rather buildings are taken to be the aftereffect of networks of relations; relations that may be as much external as internal to the architectural object itself.

While as a concept between has already opened the possibility of differing approaches to philosophy and design, it is, nonetheless, still possible to ask how the between figures. As already suggested, implicated in any use of the term between is the primacy of relationality. Thinking relationality is already a thinking of between. As a result of the clears set of connections at work in such formulations this issue of Khōrein focuses on the between and relationality. While between may be approached purely conceptually, equally it is an element within the architectural. Between provides a way of rethinking the nature of a threshold, how walls are understood, the forms of separation involved as much in border relations and divisions as between suburbs and areas within a city. Between is intended both to function as a way of thinking the relationship between architecture and philosophy, as well as giving another philosophical register to architectural terms such as wall, threshold, zone, border, etc.

Therefore, for the special issue “Between,” edited by Andrew Benjamin, Khōrein invites scholars and researchers to contribute papers in four areas:

1) those that make an almost uniquely philosophical reflection on the between. Allowing of course the resonances of coming from the translation of between (zwischen, entre, između, tra, etc.,) to itself have important implications.

2) those developing between and relationality as part of a philosophically informed intervention in architectural theory.

3) those analyzing the presence of the between and relationality as a condition in pre-existing architectural projects – built and unbuilt – moving from the scale of the house to the urban scale.

4) those deploying between and relationality as generative terms within the process of design. In this instance annotated design projects may be a suitable form of submission.

 

Submissions should be emailed to khorein@ifdt.bg.ac.rs.

Submission deadline: January 31, 2027