Media Architecture Biennale (Nov 2020, Amsterdam and Utrecht, The Netherlands)

Dates: 23-27 November 2020
Location: Amsterdam and Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Website: MAB20
Deadline for submissions: 5 April 2020

We cordially invite you to submit your contribution to the 2020 Media Architecture Biennale (MAB20) themed #FuturesImplied. The Media Architecture Biennale is the world’s premier event on media architecture, urban interaction design, and urban informatics, bringing together world-renowned architects, artists and designers, leading thinkers on urban design, key industry and government representatives, and students. The event offers workshops, symposia, a conference with an academic research track and keynotes by leading thinkers in the field. It closes off with a ceremony in which the biennial Media Architecture Awards will be presented to outstanding works of art, architecture and design. Our aim is to provide an excellent forum for debate and knowledge exchange; to offer a unique opportunity that brings together the best minds and organisations  and to highlight state-of-the-art and experimental research in media architecture.

MAB20 invites papers from academics, students, and industry practitioners that align to the theme Futures Implied and the sub-themes described below. The paper contributions should address current practices, discuss theoretical approaches, or present novel research that explore and further develop our understanding of media architecture through relevant case studies, design processes, and community and industry examples.

MAB Theme: Futures Implied
The theme for the Media Architecture Biennale 2020 is Futures Implied. Papers should address one or more of the following issues:

• The Aesthetics and Poetics of Responsive Urban Spaces: How can media architecture contribute to a sense of place, deepening citizens’ understanding of and attachments to local sites and making them more legible, imaginative, and inclusive?
• Citizens’ digital rights in the era of platform ecologies: How can media architecture articulate public values and allow citizens to govern through digital platforms, rather than be governed by them?
• Playful & Artistic Civic Engagement: How can media architecture help to enact people-centric interventions through which citizens themselves learn, negotiate, and create innovations through play and games?
• Restorative Cities: How can media architecture enable societies to regenerate socially, ecologically, and physiologically on multiple levels, from the individual to the city as an entity of systems?
• More-Than-Human Cities: How can media architecture move beyond its legacy of human-centric design, and foster and embrace the well-being of the natural ecosystem as a whole?

Important dates

Paper submission deadline: 5 April 2020
Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2020
All revisions due and Camera Ready paper deadline: 20 September 2020

Preparing your submission

• The conference invites research presentations from both academia and industry:
• We invite papers with a minimum of six and a maximum of ten pages in length, in ACM format;
• The papers should clearly explain the research question addressed, research methods and tasks, findings or results, and contributions of the work. Papers should also provide sufficient background and related work to situate and contextualise the authors’ work within a greater body of research;
• Submissions should consist of original work not previously published or concurrently under consideration for any other conference, workshop, journal, or other publication with an iSBN, iSSN, or DOI number;
• Authors must provide a 30-word contribution statement for their paper upon submission; the contribution statement should explain the contribution made by the paper to the Media Architecture community;
• Papers will be peer-reviewed by multiple members of a program committee consisting of experts in a range of disciplines that shape media architecture;
• Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library (approval pending).

Paper submission link: https://easychair.org/cfp/mab20. Submit by 5 April 2020.

About the Media Architecture Biennale

The Media Architecture Biennale is an initiative of the international Media Architecture Institute (Vienna/Sydney). After editions in Vienna, Aarhus, Sydney and Beijing, it is now organized by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with Utrecht University and a number of local partners from governments, cultural institutions, and the creative industries. Close ties to both research and industry are a central element of these events.

MAB20 will take place in Utrecht and Amsterdam, November 23-27, 2020.

An overview of all current and upcoming calls (Workshops, Papers, Demos & Posters, Late Breaking Work, Student Exhibition, Media Architecture Awards) can be found at our website.

More information & Contact
Twitter: @MABiennale.
Facebook: facebook.com/MABiennale.
Website: http://www.mab20.org.

For inspiration, please have a look at the papers from MAB 2016 and MAB 2018:
https://mab16.org/pages/conference.php
https://mab18.org/conference/