Love is a concept which does not sit comfortably within mainstream architectural discourse, perhaps regarded as too trivial or intangible for serious academic attention. This theme however carries considerable potential to reframe issues that have pervaded architectural thought in recent decades and foster deeper connections between practitioners and the people and environments influenced by their work. Inflection vol.12 invites contributors to reconsider these relationships and the relevance of love to the discipline of architecture.

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Since Vitruvius defined the three characteristics of good architecture as firmness, commodity and delight, architecture has been expressed as a source of pleasure and by extension a legitimate subject of love. In Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the anonymous author long assumed to be Leon Battista Alberti told the tale of Poliphilio (meaning “lover of many things”). The protagonist professes his love not only for his partner, Polia, but for architecture itself. Space in the novel operates as both a metaphor for desire, but also as a direct source of Poliphilio’s visceral pleasure.[1]

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Some contemporary architects have however resisted this blinkered pursuit of pleasure or pure beauty – l'art pour l'art – which is often dismissed as self-indulgent, decadent, or even morally corrupt. Bernard Tschumi, in The Pleasure of Architecture (1978), notes: “The idea that architecture can possibly exist without either moral or functional justification, or even responsibility, has been considered distasteful.”[2] He argues instead that architecture operates between the sacred and the profane, between “Apollo's ethical and spiritual mindscapes and Dionysus' erotic and sensual impulses.”[3] From this perspective, architecture is both an object of beauty, and therefore a legitimate subject of love, and also ethically charged.

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This idea is maintained by contemporary architectural discourse which is not limited to notions of romance or beauty but instead demands a more critical investigation. Alberto Pérez-Gómez asks: “Can we imagine an architecture that is both beautiful and contributes to the common good?” What is the architect’s ethical responsibility beyond the demands of budget and client? For Pérez-Gómez, the answer is love – a force in architecture that transcends mere beauty or function, positioning itself as an ethical and poetic act.[4]

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Love, in this sense, becomes an act of care and the very means through which architecture engages with both place and purpose. Yet in the age of the Anthropocene (or the Capitalocene), this volume poses the question: has the possibility of an architecture of love been lost? Donna Haraway’s conception of the Chthulucene begins to imagine an alternative epoch – one grounded in care, within which human beings are no longer a dominant force but are instead “with and of the earth.”[5] Perhaps by adopting this view an architecture of love and ethical responsibility could prosper, and encourage other professions of the built environment to begin to address the looming environmental concerns of today?

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Human sexuality is another topic inherently intertwined with both discussions of love and space. Its relevance to architecture is evident in the history of the built environment, from nunneries to brothels, which make explicit their ascetic or carnal purposes. Today however it is acknowledged that sexuality in the built environment is not always so overt but also implicit in the architecture of the quotidian. Toward the turn of the 21st century, editor of Sexuality and Space (1992) Beatriz Colomina highlighted that “the politics of space are always sexual, even if space is central to the mechanisms of the erasure of sexuality.”[6] 

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In 2011, Philip Hubbard in his study of prostitution highlighted that sexual expression is a localised phenomenon, influenced by the quality of place and its implicit value systems.[7] The built environment, then, both communicates cultural values and moulds the way sexual identities are expressed in both public and private. Acknowledging both this symbiotic relationship between sexuality and place and the extent to which understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity have shifted in recent years, Inflection vol.12 might ask: has the built environment adapted to accommodate these newfound attitudes? Or does contemporary architecture continue to reflect and encourage longstanding biases of discrimination and heteronormativity?

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In acknowledging the many manifestations of love in the built environment, the Inflection vol. 12 editors invite submissions that engage with the complexities and contradictions of love and its relationship —both explicit and subtle—to the discipline of architecture and urban design. We invite full-paper drafts of academic pieces (up to 4,500 words), practice-related pieces (up to 1,000 words), fictional works (up to 500 words), and visual artworks that explore these themes.

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Abstracts (500 words) of academic and practice-oriented pieces can be submitted to inflectionjournal@gmail.com until Tuesday 1st of July 2025. 

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Notes

 

1. Liane Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), under “Eros and Metaphor,” https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/books_pres_0/4196/HP.zip/hyptext8.htm.

2. Bernard Tschumi, "The Pleasure of Architecture," Architectural Design 47, no. 3 (1977): 214.

3. Ibid, 215.

4. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Built upon Love: Towards Beauty and Justice in Architecture,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 44, no. 3 (2011): 45.

5. Donna Haraway, "Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene," e-flux Journal 75 (2016), https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/.

6. Beatriz Colomina and Jennifer Bloomer, eds. Sexuality & Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), 2.

7. Philip Hubbard, Sex and the City: Geographies of Prostitution in the Urban West (London: Routledge, 2020), 3.

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Vol. 12 Editors

Sunny Brearley

Sivan Danin

Alec Gutteridge

Lachie Meckiff

Charlotte Schaller

Nethuni Sumanaweera 

Dorothea Yannoulidis

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Submissions must adhere to the Inflection referencing style guides and image requirements, as outlined below:

 

Referencing Style Guide

• In general, Inflection uses the Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition) as a guide for grammar, punctuation and referencing. The Chicago Manual of Style is available online to subscribers at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org. A freely available citation guide can be found at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html, or through the University of Melbourne’s citation tool, http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/recite/citations/chicago/generalNotes.html. When preparing work for publication in Inflection, we ask that authors follow the Chicago Manual as closely as possible to maintain stylistic consistency and ensure all work is fully referenced. Inflection uses Australian or British English spelling, and asks that authors prepare their work accordingly.

• Inflection uses endnotes in preference to footnote or in-text citation. When preparing work for submission, please make sure that notes are formatted as endnotes. A separate bibliography is not necessary. In general, the basic format for referencing in Inflection is as follows: Given Name Surname, Title (Location: Publisher, Date), page number(s).

• In general, references should be as concise as possible. For example, only a city name is needed when referencing a place of publication – the country or state of publication is not required.

• In the second and subsequent note to a previously referenced text, a short form reference should be used, in the following format: Surname, Title, page number-page number.

• When a reference is immediately followed in the endnote sequence by an identical reference, use: Ibid.

• Where the next reference is from a different page of the same text, the correct format is: Ibid., page number(s).

• Under Inflection’s endnote referencing style, notes will typically not occur on the same page as their reference number. For this reason, we recommend that contributors avoid using notes for supplementary remarks. Where possible, comments should be incorporated into the body in parentheses.

 

Image Guidelines
Images must be (ideally) 300dpi and in TIFF format. For black and white images, the colour profile must be set to grayscale, and for colour images, the profile must be set to CMYK. This can be adjusted in Adobe Photoshop (Image>Mode).

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