Station to Station
Railway stations in theory, practice, and dreams
Edited by Alberto Brodesco, Carlo Brentari and Andrea Mubi Brighenti
We transit through railways stations daily, sometimes we spend long hours there waiting for delayed connections, or amid strikes. In these alternatively chaotic and solitary environments, we watch anonymous others pass by, we dig deep into our phones, we sit in cheaply furnished eateries, we absentmindedly sip drinks.
An archetypal architecture of modernity, the railway station embodies the very same contradictions of modernity: supposedly efficient and streamlined, it constantly secretes antidotes to rationality, in the form of incongruencies, impracticalities, resistances, and dreams that twist the spatial experience in multiple ways. From large metropolitan central stations to the modest stations of sleepy provincial towns, or villages, territories of endless marvel open up once we pause to analyze the mundane details of conception and usage.
The station, as both an architectural entity and a state of mind, is at the pivot of this issue of lo Squaderno. We are interested in the railway station’s visualscape, and how it is featured in movies, novels, songs, or at arts events. We wish to appraise comparatively the technological set-up of stations since the nineteenth century through today. We seek to collect reports on the forms of sociality and socialization that develop in and around stations world-wide. And, finally, we would like to capture the peculiar temporality of railway stations for designers, workers, passengers, and loiterers.
Contributions from all disciplines – ranging from literature and the humanities, through film and media studies, to anthropology, sociology, human geography, architecture and planning – are welcome. Join lo Squaderno and go in the way of history!
| Deadline for Contributions | 30 July 2024
| Articles’ length | 2,000 words
| Submit to | losquaderno≤at≥gmail≤.≥com
| Information about the Journal | http://www.losquaderno.net/?page_id=2
| Information about the Editorial Process + Author’s Submission Checklist | http://www.losquaderno.net/?page_id=1082
