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CALL FOR PAPERSInternational Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA)Special Issue on Architecture and MobilityThematic volume planned for Summer 2014Proposal Submission deadline: 1 March 2013Architecture is often analogized to a biological organism with the ability to grow and change. Consistent with this metaphor of mutability, the common term for edifice in English is “building,” and not “built.” As a verbal noun or gerund, the word “building” linguistically and conceptually highlights how a built form is never just a static entity. To the contrary, it is almost invariably an entity in-the-making.The spatially untethered character of building knowledge and forms in the Islamic world can be explored across cultural and temporal geographies from the seventh century to today. The earliest architectural projects without a doubt built upon older Arabian, Mediterranean, and Persian forms, synthesizing past practices of construction and ornamentation into a novel language of presence for nascent Muslim communities both within and beyond the Middle East. In the medieval period, and especially in the wake of the Crusades, artists, artisans, objects, and architectural spolia traveled widely, catalyzing international styles of architecture, in some instances spreading the Gothic mode beyond mainland Europe. By ca. 1300 CE, increasingly transhumant practices were instigated by the arrival of Turco-Mongolian groups in Dar al-Islam. The Ilkhanids in Iran, for example, used lavish tents and erected permanent or semi-permanent structures recalling the Mongolian yurt. In the early modern and modern periods, elite members of dynastic households across the Islamic world patronized urban and architectural complexes that display an ethos of empire, their adopted and adapted built forms suggestive of worldly power and dominion. More recently, architectural projects show a clear engagement with local practices through a revivalist or competitive discourse that touches upon questions of tradition, authenticity, and cultural heritage. Such dialogues with the past have continued to the present day, with patrons, entrepreneurs, architects, and designers working in creative synergy to preserve, revive, and even invent “indigenous” forms while also promoting a particular vision of Islamic modernity that may collapse geographic distances and ignore accepted national or regional boundaries, at times in order to strengthen a particular ideological position or agenda. In the search for a relevant lexicon of building in the contemporary Middle East, architects and designers have often engaged with mobile forms, in both abstract and tangible ways.From the Tent City of Mina and the Hajj Terminal in Mecca, to the photo-sensitive mashrabiyya in the Institut du Monde Arabe, to the temporary shrines and models lining or processed in streets during Muharram festivities, tensile and temporary forms of architecture indubitably continue to flourish in the Islamic world today.This special issue invites papers that address the “gerundial” qualities of architecture in the Islamic world. Papers may draw on historical or contemporary examples to explore the locational mutability and aesthetic adaptability of built forms broadly wrought. Themes that may be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following questions:1. What are some of the relationships between permanent and mobile forms of architecture in Islamic lands?2. Going beyond discussions of cause-and-effect, what aesthetic characteristics are shared among architecture, the textile arts (e.g., the kiswa, curtains, etc.), and tentage traditions?3. How might one continue to explore and further theorize “draped” and movable forms of architecture?4. How did built forms and designs move through Islamic lands with migrant peoples, and, along with them, knowledge, practices, and objects?5. How can contemporary architects and designers achieve or express flux of space and flexibility of form in their architectural projects?6. And finally, how can scholars address, define, and theorize what might be called an “aesthetics of mobility” in Islamic architectural traditions?Essays that focus on historical and theoretical analysis (DiT papers) should be a minimum of 5,000 words but no more than 8,000 words; and essays on design (DiP papers) can range from 2,000 to 3,000 words.Please send a 400-word abstract with essay title to the guest editor, Prof. Christiane Gruber (cjgruber@umich.edu), by 1 March 2013. Those whose proposals are accepted will be contacted soon thereafter and requested to submit full papers to the journal by 25 July 2013. All papers will undergo full peer review.For author instructions regarding paper guidelines, please consult:  www.intellectbooks.com/ijiaSource: cjgruber@umich.edu