Cambridge Talks: Acts of Scaling

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Event Description
In 1977, nine years after its initial release, Ray and Charles Eames issued an amended version of their experimental film Powers of Ten, incorporating two additional scales, and thereby effecting “a hundredfold increase—to each end of the journey into the universe, and to the return trip to the microstructure of the carbon atom in the human body.” Drawing on up-to-the-moment scientific developments at scales both extra-large and extra-small, seizing upon the power of then-novel media and representational techniques to appeal to very different audiences, and venturing well beyond the ostensible borders of the design disciplines, the Eames’ visual and narrative encapsulation of a complex and interconnected universe displays precisely how scale, or more precisely how scaling, can shape imaginaries and practices across the arts, humanities, and sciences, as well as in popular culture. As technical innovations augment the scope of our powers both to perceive and to intervene, we are confronted with a relentless ordering and reordering of knowledge. This epistemological dilemma compels us to articulate new theoretical frameworks, to relentlessly renegotiate disciplinary boundaries, and to analyze, address, and problem-solve between—and often simultaneously at—an ever-proliferating range of scales.
For architects, landscape architects, and urban planners, no less than for historians and scientists in their many specializations, scale has historically served as a key element in the organization of disciplinary concerns, facilitating intellectual fixation upon, and rigorous examination of, a particular and coherent set of objects or circumstances, even when underpinned by a tacit understanding that things and phenomena of all scales are ultimately intertwined and mutually constituted. Recent decades, however, have been marked by a seeming destabilization of once reliable thresholds between these scales of consideration, owing, among other considerations, to the ethical, epistemological, even ontological exigencies of anthropogenic climate change. From Geoffrey West’s laws of scaling, applicable as much to microscopic organisms as to the complex dynamics of cities and territories, to the temporal and geological strata of the earth interrogated by archaeologists and geologists; from the hyper-local scales prioritized by microhistorians, to the sprawling and multifaceted networks of movement (of people, materials, and ideas) at the heart of the mobilities paradigm proposed by sociologists John Urry and Mimi Sheller; and from the humanistic global scale so central to political science, economics, and urban theory for the past half-century, to the more ecologically and philosophically synthetic planetary scale of history posited by Dipesh Chakrabarty—myriad theoretical and material confrontations, both explicit or implicit, emerge out of the hermeneutical work of scaling.
Indeed, the questions that arise out of generating knowledge—and rendering it commensurable—between scales, are both sprawling and complex. What events or phenomena in the history of design—and of environmental and spatial practices, broadly conceived—or of art, science, technology, etc., can be made more legible or more discursively generative by thinking about scalar translations and shifts? What biases, frameworks, or cosmologies may be brought to light? What behaviors, linear or nonlinear, come to the fore, and at what point do these behaviors begin to take on the semblance of patterns or even laws of scaling? How have scalar operations been deployed throughout history to seize and exercise social, economic, and political agency and power? How has the constant shifting of scalar frontiers, both extra-small or extra-large, impacted research across disciplines, and what potential may these exchanges hold for new forms of practice, new modes of investigation, new and hybrid bodies of knowledge? What instruments and techniques are employed to manage these scalar shifts and leaps, and how do they work? What media and modes of intermediation can be discussed? How has the framing of new scalar imaginaries, whether great or small, inflected the protocols of research and practice throughout history, whether in the design disciplines, or in the sciences and humanities that shape and attend to them?
For the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s 2025 Cambridge Talks conference, Acts of Scaling, we seek original papers reflecting your observations, insights, and theories with respect to the parameters, mechanics, and consequences of these negotiations or shifts between scales throughout history. We invite PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career scholars of the design and environmental humanities, and from the diverse and ever more diffuse fields operating in dialogue with them, to join us in engaging with these questions.
Details
Dates: Friday, April 4th – Saturday, April 5th, 2025
Location: Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Organizers: Matthew Kennedy and Adil Mansure (PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning)
Free and Open to the Public
Submissions
Please submit abstracts (approx. 300 words), curriculum vitae, and contact information to https://tinyurl.com/acts-of-scaling no later than Friday, January 17th.
Authors of accepted papers will be notified via email by Monday, January 27th. Conference participants will subsequently be asked to submit a full preliminary draft (exclusively for internal distribution among conference participants and faculty respondents) by Friday, March 21st.
Please direct questions to the conference organizers at [email protected].
Cambridge Talks is an annual conference organized by students of the PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and is generously supported by the GSD’s Advanced Studies programs. Cambridge Talks 2025: Acts of Scaling is organized by PhD students Matthew Kennedy and Adil Mansure, and advised by Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, and Director of Doctoral Programs. Conference graphic identity designed by Willis Kingery.
Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.
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