Embodied Culture explores the cultural layers of the built environment across time, scale, and practice. The symposium brings together scholars, designers, and practitioners to reflect on how materials, labour, techniques, and regulations shape buildings, and how buildings in turn shape societies and landscapes.

Call for Abstracts

We invite contributions that engage with the cultural dimensions of building and reuse. Proposals can address one or more of the symposium’s seven thematic lenses:

• Materials and Landscapes – Extraction, circulation and cultural landscapes
• Cultural Techniques and Practices – Embodied knowledge in everyday building
• Labour, Tools and Agency – The social and material organisation of work
• Regulations and Bureaucracies – Codes, norms and the politics of building
• Material Traces and Values – Patina, obsolescence and contested worth
• Metacultural Operations – Bridging material culture and heritage practice
• Temporalities and Afterlives – Durability, decay and architectural time

Deadline for abstracts: 31 December 2025

Download the full Call for Abstracts here (pdf)

Submission Guidelines (short version)

• Online form (https://forms.office.com/e/iHzLxTrmtW)  
• Abstract: ~300 words, in English.
• Formats: paper presentation or alternative format (e.g. video essay, round table, workshop).
• Blind peer review: submit names, affiliation and short CV separately via online form.
• If accepted: short paper (~2,000 words) due by 31 March 2026.

Committees & Networks

The symposium is organised by VUB Architectural Engineering within the FWO Scientific Research Network READ.ADAPT.REUSE, and the interdisciplinary project Re-Building Brussels (1695–2025).

Scientific Committee (in alphabetical order): Tiphaine Abenia, Thordis Arrhenius, Linda Clarke, Judith Cools, Stijn Cools, Alison Creba, Lionel Devlieger, Bert De Munck, Simon De Nys-Ketels, Robby Fivez, Michaël Ghyoot, Christoph Grafe, Jane Mah Hutton, Imane Huyghebaert, Pauline Lefebvre, Mari Lending, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Bie Plevoets, Chiara Pradel, Lara Reyniers, Mathias Rollot, Susan Ross, Eireen Schreurs, Lara Schrijver, Jean Souviron, Stephanie Van de Voorde, Caroline Voet, Christine Wall      
Organising Committee: Stephanie Van de Voorde, Imane Huyghebaert, Judith Cools, Liese Van Holen (VUB Architectural Engineering)