Footprint 34, ‘Narrating Shared Futures’, is dedicated to a transdisciplinary encounter between literature and cultural heritage. Namely, in this issue we seek to understand how literature can help us unpack complex meanings of places of heritage, and use that knowledge to imagine, design and produce tolerant and inclusive architectures. We focus our discussion around the three notions that appear in the title of the issue – ‘narrating’, ‘shared’ and ‘futures’, investigating how both heritage architecture and literature can offer valuable lessons for imagining better and more inclusive future worlds. Each of the articles featured in this volume contributes to the proposed framing with powerful and global case studies. Put together, they present new ways in which the past, present and future are constantly being made in-the-now through both literary and design techniques.@en

Borders between countries, neighbourhoods, people, beliefs, and policies are proliferating and expanding despite what self-proclaimed progressive societies wish or choose to believe. For a wide variety of reasons, the early 21st century is caught struggling between breaking down barriers and raising them. Architecture is complicit in both. It is central to the perpetuation of borders, and key to their dismantling. Architectures of Resistance: Negotiating Borders Through Spatial Practices approaches borders as sites of meaningful encounter between others (other cultures, other nations, other perspectives), guided not by fear or hatred but by respect and tolerance. The contributors to this volume – including architects, urban planners, artists, human geographers, and political scientists – address spatial boundaries as places where social and political conditions are intensified and where new spatial practices of architectural resistance arise. Moving across contemporary, historical, and speculative conditions of borders, Architectures of Resistance discusses new and innovative forms of architectural, artistic, and political practice that facilitate constructive human interaction. [...]@en

Acoustic atmospheres can be fleeting, elusive, or short-lived. Sometimes they are constant, but more often they change from one moment to the next, forming distinct impressions each time we visit certain places. Stable or dynamic, acoustic atmospheres have a powerful effect on our spatial experience, sometimes even more so than architecture itself. This book explores the acoustic atmospheres of diverse architectural environments, in terms of scale, function, location, or historic period—providing an overview of how acoustic atmospheres are created, perceived, experienced, and visualized. Contributors explore how sound and its atmospheres transform architecture and space. Their essays demonstrate that sound is a tangible element in the design and staging of atmospheres and that it should become a central part of the spatial explorations of architects, designers, and urban planners.The Sound of Architecture will be of interest to architectural historians, theorists, students, and practicing architects, who will discover how acoustic atmospheres can be created without complex and specialized engineering. It will also be of value to scholars working in the field of history of emotions, as it offers evocative descriptions of acoustic atmospheres from diverse cultures and time periods.@en

The sixth issue is an invitation to look beyond the definitions of meaningfulness, appropriation and integration, and explore the relations between them. We have liberally arranged the articles under the three main themes but, as it can easily become clear, there are overlaps among the themes. In that way, this issue offers not only a geographical journey along different urban narratives, but also an expedition into the network of interrelated terms and spatial practices.@en

Architecture is by definition an act of spatial imagination, this wondrous capacity to envision possible futures for the built environment. Spatial imagination is essential in order to visualize new constructions taking shape, evolving in time, and partaking of the cultural expression of a place or era. It takes spatial imagination to foresee how architecture can meaningfully contribute to people’s lives, providing a sense of belonging, space for their needs and dreams. Nonetheless, spatial imagination is oftentimes hard to trigger or difficult to control. Imaginative ideas often emerge unexpectedly, when seemingly unconnected or contradictory words, images and thoughts are brought together. With spatial imagination being an intrinsic aspect of architecture and design, but also deeply embedded in fields like literature or the arts, this fourth issue of Writingplace focuses on concepts, elements and theoretical foundations from different strands of knowledge that can propel choices and strategies of spatial imagination.@en