Thresholds Journal

Thresholds 54: Record officially launches this Friday! The issue invites you into the liminal space between noun and verb, grappling with friction between the record and the act of recording. Our authors cover a wide-range of stories, across scales of time and geography. Come to the Long Lounge at 5:30pm on May 1 to snag a free copy at our launch event! You can also view or purchase the issue online at @mitpress . A massive thank you to the brilliant @ivvjsvc for her graphic design and to all our phenomenal contributors 🌟 We’re so excited to share the issue with you all ♥️ - Hana Meihan Davis @hanstere & Bridget Peak (Co-Editors)

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 1! Call for submissions Thresholds 55: Property Edited by Maia Adele Simon and Hana Nikčević – Property: a thing, often material, that is possessed. Property: an aspect or attribute of that thing. While seemingly concrete, the concept of property is frequently fragmentary, contingent, and ephemeral, premised in an array of theoretical descriptions. Constructed through social relationships and defined through reciprocal accord, ideas of property have been foundational in both western and non-western frameworks of culture and law, implicated in understandings of individual autonomy, rights, and the economy. From the enclosure of land to its representation in painting, from waqf funds to development mechanisms to environmental protection, to labor, protest, and repatriation, imaginaries of property have shaped art and architecture through history and across geographies. Thresholds 55 invites scholarly writing, criticism, and artistic interventions that interrogate these interactions. – Full call for submissions on our website (link in bio) and @e_flux Submission deadline: JUNE 1, 2026 – Graphic design: Willis Kingery

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Thresholds 55: Property Edited by Maia Adele Simon and Hana Nikčević – Property: a thing, often material, that is possessed. Property: an aspect or attribute of that thing. While seemingly concrete, the concept of property is frequently fragmentary, contingent, and ephemeral, premised in an array of theoretical descriptions. Property is constructed through social relationships and defined through reciprocal accord. These social dynamics highlight the proximity of property to power through its delimitation of rights to access, possession, and exclusion. Ideas of property have been foundational in both western and non-western frameworks of culture and law, implicated in understandings of individual autonomy, rights, and the economy. From the enclosure of land to its representation in painting, from waqf funds to development mechanisms to environmental protection, to labor, protest, and repatriation, imaginaries of property have shaped art and architecture through history and across geographies. Thresholds 55 invites scholarly writing, criticism, and artistic interventions that interrogate these interactions. – Full call for submissions on our website (link in bio) and @e_flux Submission deadline: May 1, 2026 – Graphic design: Willis Kingery

🎉 So happy to share that Thresholds 53: Idle is a recipient of the 2025 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals! Named after architectural journalist and former Architectural Forum editor Douglas Haskell, this award recognizes excellence in student journalism covering architecture, planning, design, and related fields. Our heartfelt congratulations go to editors Joshua Tan and Mingjia Chen, along with the entire Issue 53 team. The next issue of Thresholds (#54, “Record”) will be edited by student editors Hana Meihan Davis and Bridget Peak. Learn more about Thresholds and browse the current issue at the link in our bio. 📸 Chenyue "xdd44" Dai @realxdd44

Submissions for Thresholds 54: RECORD are due Sunday, June 1. Send essays and creative pieces to [email protected] 🌟 Thresholds 54: RECORD invites you into the liminal space between noun and verb, it grapples with friction between the record and the act of recording. We seek to explore the duality of record / record in art and architecture, through history, criticism, and future imaginary. We are interested in contributions across disciplines, geographies and timescales, in the role record(ing) plays in both unworlding and rebuilding. We welcome writing on records intentional and incidental, recording active and passive. Will record[ing] be our recovery? Please view Open Call and Submission Guidelines on @e_flux or at the link in our bio. TH54 is edited by Hana Meihan Davis and Bridget Peak. Graphic design by Ivana Vujošević.

DEADLINE EXTENDED!! Submit by June 1, 2025 Edited by Hana Meihan Davis and Bridget Peak. Graphic design by Ivana Vujošević. Noun / An embodied account, or collected evidence of the past, especially kept in writing, image, or some other enduring form. Verb / To intentionally transcribe in lasting form, with the goal of preservation or safekeeping for future reference, reproduction, or recovery—officially or unofficially. A record is inheritance, to record is empowerment. Records are not merely collected data; recording erases and instantiates. History exists as a constellation of traces we piece together—ghosts of what came before, haunting the world around—in us as we are in them. Our planet, our cities, our bodies keep score. Each mine drilled, every foundation laid, even the whispers of pollution left by past empires are blips on a geologic time scale that betray human conquest. Implicated more than most, the architect’s built and unbuilt records impress themselves above and below Earth’s surface. The artist intervenes, creates, fabricates, and destroys records of countless varieties. The historian sees records in material, building worlds from broken vases, from photographs, paintings, and species now extinct. How do we interpret and interact with records in the present? How are histories redacted and rewritten? How can we reclaim the authority of the record in the face of our colonial legacy? Between the records we create and the ones we inherit, is there a productive space for us to intervene in the inevitability of our trace? Thresholds 54: Record invites you into this liminal space between noun and verb, it grapples with friction between the record and the act of recording. We seek to explore the duality of record / record in art and architecture, through history, criticism, and future imaginary. We are interested in contributions across disciplines, geographies and timescales, in the role record(ing) plays in both unworlding and rebuilding. We welcome writing on records intentional and incidental, recording active and passive. Will record[ing] be our recovery? Please view Open Call and Submission Guidelines on @e_flux or at link in bio.

Edited by Hana Meihan Davis and Bridget Peak. Graphic design by Ivana Vujošević. Noun / An embodied account, or collected evidence of the past, especially kept in writing, image, or some other enduring form. Verb / To intentionally transcribe in lasting form, with the goal of preservation or safekeeping for future reference, reproduction, or recovery—officially or unofficially. A record is inheritance, to record is empowerment. Records are not merely collected data; recording erases and instantiates. History exists as a constellation of traces we piece together—ghosts of what came before, haunting the world around—in us as we are in them. Our planet, our cities, our bodies keep score. Each mine drilled, every foundation laid, even the whispers of pollution left by past empires are blips on a geologic time scale that betray human conquest. Implicated more than most, the architect’s built and unbuilt records impress themselves above and below Earth’s surface. The artist intervenes, creates, fabricates, and destroys records of countless varieties. The historian sees records in material, building worlds from broken vases, from photographs, paintings, and species now extinct. How do we interpret and interact with records in the present? How are histories redacted and rewritten? How can we reclaim the authority of the record in the face of our colonial legacy? Between the records we create and the ones we inherit, is there a productive space for us to intervene in the inevitability of our trace?  Thresholds 54: Record invites you into this liminal space between noun and verb, it grapples with friction between the record and the act of recording. We seek to explore the duality of record / record in art and architecture, through history, criticism, and future imaginary. We are interested in contributions across disciplines, geographies and timescales, in the role record(ing) plays in both unworlding and rebuilding. We welcome writing on records intentional and incidental, recording active and passive. Will record[ing] be our recovery? Submission deadline: May 1, 2025 Please view Open Call and Submission Guidelines on @e_flux or at link in bio.

The 2025 HTC Graduate Colloquium will collaboratively probe the contours of historical knowability and attend to yet unmade futures in and across the disciplines of architecture, art, design, urbanism, and allied fields. Uncertainty offers space for reimagination, for creatively rethinking the future of our disciplines — an urgent endeavor considering compounding pressures of unfolding environmental and humanitarian crises in addition to increased scrutiny of the “value” of the humanities in our universities. To this end, we encourage submissions in one of two formats: 15-20 minute papers that engage with uncertainty as a historical thematic; or position papers (approx. 1,200 words) that critically engage uncertainty as a contemporary problematic and potential of our fields. Through paper presentations and workshops, the colloquium will provide a vital forum for collaboratively envisioning the future of the field. To be considered, please submit a 300-word abstract and a CV in a single PDF document to [email protected] by Oct. 25, 2024.

Thinking about submitting to Thresholds? All these printers await your draft! Thresholds 53 deadline extended to June 9! Instructions on how to submit in bio.

To support space for idleness, we are extending the deadline for Thresholds! Be idle for a while in a garden (like this cutie). Image courtesy of the MET: Wen Zhengming’s Garden of the Inept Administrator. New Deadline: June 9, 2024 Edited by Joshua Tan and Mingjia Chen Links in bio for where to submit!

Did idling keep you from submitting a proposal for the next issue of Thresholds? Well, the deadline is EXTENDED!!! Thresholds 53 | IDLE Submission Deadline: June 9, 2024 Edited by Joshua Tan and Mingjia Chen Links in bio for full details

[DEADLINE EXTENDED] Thresholds 53: IDLE call for submissions has been extended to JUNE 9. #mit #mitarchitecture #mitpress #journal #thresholds #thresholdsjournal @mitpress @mitarchitecture