AIARG annual international conference 2026, Cork, 5-7.03.2026

Cork Centre for Architectural Education (CCAE) is hosting the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group (AIARG)'s annual international conference 2026 next March on the theme of Architecture in the Critical Zone, inspired by Bruno Latour and Peter Wiebel's exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe, Center for Art and Media and subsequent publication by The MIT Press, addressing the science and politics of landing on earth.  

Latour and Wiebel captured the disorientation of life in a world facing climate change. They traced this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land where modern humans live; the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another hidden one from which they derive their wealth – the land they live on and the land they live from. Charting the land that they will live from they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble”, but a series of critical zones – patchy, heterogeneous and discontinuous. Within the context of rapidly shifting geopolitical conflict, we must address this trouble. 

The term "Critical Zone" is taken from the geo-sciences and describes the biochemical, fragile layer of the earth, its surface on which life is created. By Bruno Latour, the term is extended to a critical, participatory relationship to our living world, whose threatened state has reached an unprecedented scale in the Earth's now man-made history. Latour has described this worldwide situation, which affects all living beings on the planet, as a "new climate regime". It is not limited to ecological crises, but touches on questions of politics and cultural history as well as ethical and epistemological changes of perspective.

Keynote speakers include Alexandra Arènes, Sébastien Marot and Amin Taha. The conference will support established research methods but also welcomes emerging fields such as research by design and artistic/creative practice. The conference invites submissions from a diverse range of disciplines and these may be traditional papers, drawings, films, designed artefacts or hybrids. The call for submissions is now open and you can find details here https://www.ucc.ie/en/architecture/research/aiarg2026/