Stories of Collective Authorship in Architecture
Special issue of Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism
A building is never the work of a single mind. Yet architectural history has long narrated the built environment through the singular author: the architect whose name becomes synonymous with a building. Recent scholarship instead shows architectural production to be distributed across networks of designers, technicians, engineers, builders, clients, administrators, institutions, technologies, materials, and environments.
This special issue of *Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism* invites historians and scholars in related fields to examine architecture through the lens of collective authorship. Rather than asking simply who designed a building, we ask how ideas and decisions emerge through constellations of actors, tools, institutions, and circumstances—and how historians might tell those more complex stories. Contributions may address any period or geography; comparative and transnational approaches are welcome.
We especially seek work on forms of labor and agency obscured by conventional narratives of individual creativity: collaborative design practices; architectural and engineering offices; state design institutes and public agencies; corporate and bureaucratic cultures; technicians, draftspeople, programmers, project managers, consultants, contractors, and inhabitants; transnational design teams; and the role of computation, documentation, and other technical systems in organizing collective work.
Contributions may also connect architectural history with histories of institutions, labor, technology, material culture, political economy, and environment. Methodological experimentation is encouraged, including project microhistories, collective biographies, oral histories, archival reconstructions, object histories, and documentary essays.
The aim is not simply to replace the “great architect” with a longer list of contributors, but to reconsider how architectural causation, creativity, and historical agency are understood and narrated.
Guest Editor: Matthew Allen, Washington University in St. Louis
We invite all those interested to submit materials to the Editorial Office at paujournal@outlook.com using as subject line: CFP Collective Authorship AUTHOR’S SURNAME abstract
The deadline for submission is November 20th, 2026
Selected authors will be invited to present a preliminary draft of their paper (approx. 2,000-2,500 words) at an upcoming international symposium (April or May 2027, in-person and online)
Full papers must be submitted by July 31st, 2027
For complete information, please see the CFP on the Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism websit