The journal Next Generation Building (NGB) provides a professional and academic research platform that addresses challenges and implications of contemporary and future technological developments on architecture. NGB covers planning procedures, computational design integration, design systems and fabrication methodologies, assembly logistics, and management strategies from design to production and to use-cycle of buildings. NGB tackles the role of technology for architecture situated in socio-cultural dynamics toward sustainable spatial constructs that are sensitive of economies, customizable, and user-centric. NGB emphasizes the confluence of technological innovation and emergent aesthetics that has become the core of design profession.

Call for Papers for Next Generation Building, Vol. 4, 2017: Building-as-Apparatus or Cyber-physical Apparatization in/of Architecture

Dr. Sang Lee & Dr. Henriette Bier, TU Delft (eds.)

Transitioning from mechanical and analogue electronics towards digital electronics, all facets of human society have undergone sweeping transformations not only in material production and economy, but also in ideologies and worldviews. Along the way, the accelerating digitalisation have produced layers of complex apparatuses and vast arrays of interdependencies. Architecture is no exception in the tidal wave of changes.

The 4th volume of the journal Next Generation Building (NGB V4) in 2017 will examine the notion of apparatus as an assemblage of various components, tools, and instruments that in combination produces exponential surplus beyond the linear sum of parts. More crucially, NGB V4 will expand on the Foucaudian sense of apparatus (dispositif) that addresses urgent needs and produces new rationalities. Computational apparatuses, first aimed at augmenting and extending human capacities, brought about profound changes not only to architecture but also to the cultural and social fabric. Today, buildings themselves have become apparatuses that perform complex series of functions ranging from automation to generation of meaning. Likewise, the work of architects demands a complex set of knowledge, tools, and techniques, which in combination produces apparatized conditions from conception to completion and to use.

The NGB V4 will explore the opportunities, challenges, and implications of building-as-apparatus in contemporary and future discourse of architecture. The theme apparatization pertains to: computational conception and design; design as system of apparatuses; design-fabrication-operation methodologies; materiality, assembly, and management of design, construction, and operation of buildings; and as significantly, aesthetic ramifications stemming from such apparatized architecture and buildings.

The editors of the NGB V4 invite interested scholars, researchers, and professionals to address the theme and contribute to the journal. Submitted papers will be reviewed and selected in a double-blind peer-review process by an independent panel of experts and scholars. Subsequently, the authors of accepted papers will be asked to respond to the questions and comments of the review panel and clarify, edit, and revise papers.

Schedule
14 Aug. 2017 Call for papers
11 Sep. 2017 Paper submission deadline
16 Oct. 2017 Announcement of selected papers with reviewers' questions and comments
30 Nov. 2017 Revised paper submission deadline
The paper submission should conform to the NGB journal guidelines:
http://journals.library.tudelft.nl/index.php/nextgenb/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions