Events

CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 31 MARCH 2026

Concrete transforms and disintegrates socio-spatial worlds across time and scales. It derives existence from the blasted landscapes caused by limestone and sand extraction and inhabits the altered urban ecologies of concrete landscapes. Concrete is generated for and employed in construction—and the ensuing structures maintained—by labouring bodies along with the environments these bodies occupy. It finds its way into the polluted sites where construction materials are disposed. Yet, these interlocking metabolic dynamics of concrete environments are rarely understood in conjunction with each other.

This workshop employs the notion of ‘concrete dis/assemblages’ to explore the interrelated but discrepant socio-temporal dimensions and ecologies of concrete. It calls attention to how diverse and partially connected sites of concrete production, circulation, and disposal assemble and disassemble variegated environments. In doing so, the workshop seeks to provincialize the Anthropocene by highlighting the multifold processes of (un)making concrete in Asia.
Today, around two-thirds of cement production plants are located in Asia. China alone accounts for more than half of global concrete production and consumption. The proliferation of transregional urbanism and large-scale infrastructural projects, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, has spurred the demand for and disposal of concrete in Asia.

As a compound made up of cement, sand, and water, concrete production creates different mining environments with lasting geological impacts. The production of cement is carbon intensive. The conversion of limestone into clinker, a key ingredient in cement, constitutes 4-8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Concrete built environments have transformed hydrological and terrestrial landscapes, reconfiguring urban metabolic processes and cities’ capacities to respond to climate futures. Meanwhile, processes of decay and disrepair open up new disposal time-spaces. The uncountable construction and demolition debris accumulates as enduring geological strata.

What does it mean to think about the dis/assembling processes of concrete environments wrapped in the intertwined temporalities and socialities of concrete making? How does the focus on concrete environments in Asia and beyond illuminate this very moment of planetary crisis, one that is deeply entangled with concrete? To what extent can we make concrete sustainable and/or actualize a world without concrete?

The workshop invites conceptual and empirical work that critically examines the socio-environmental lives of concrete from Asian perspectives, engaging with the following three themes:

• Concrete’s environments: What kinds of environments emerge throughout the lifecycle of concrete? What are the environmental histories and scalar politics of producing and using concrete? How are natural landscapes in Asia, often tied to sacredness, transformed by concrete?
• Concrete’s socialities: How has concrete been used to realize various visions of modernity and support social lives in Asia? What forms of expertise and labour are involved in adapting concrete to local needs? What socio-economic forces disrupt the maintenance of concrete, accelerating its obsolescence?
• Concrete’s temporalities: How does concrete exhibit multiple temporalities from the linear progression of extraction to the cyclical time of rebuilding? What do such divergent temporalities tell us about the imaginaries and materialities of concrete? How might we re-imagine concrete’s temporalities?

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (maximum 300 words), and a brief personal biography (about 150 words), and be submitted by 31 March 2026. Additionally, please include a statement confirming that your proposed paper has not been published or committed elsewhere, and that you are willing to revise the version of your paper presented at the workshop for potential inclusion in a special issue. Please submit your proposal using the form available on the website.

Authors of selected proposals will be notified in mid April 2026. Presenters will be required to submit short draft papers (between 3,000-5,000 words) by 15 July 2026. These papers will be distributed to fellow speakers and chairpersons prior to the workshop and do not need to be fully polished.

This workshop will be held in person. Full or partial airfare funding will be offered to overseas participants, as well as three nights of accommodation in Singapore. Please indicate your need for funding support in the proposal form.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Justin Chun-Him Lau | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Dr Saptarshi Sanyal | Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore
Assoc Prof Jiat-Hwee Chang | Asia Research Institute & Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore