PLATFORM: The State of the Built Environment (an Editorial)
Six months ago, we commenced an experiment in digital publishing. We decided to invent a new form of publication, somewhere between a blog, a magazine, and a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, that features short form writing and that can also be generously complemented with multimedia content. We invited writers to share their views on the state of the built environment by writing posts that are timely, diverse, and provocative, and that are composed with the fluidity and accessibility of journalistic prose. In so doing, we responded to a lacuna in our fields: the absence of a venue where critical concerns about the built environment can be shared quickly—in as little as a week or two—without sacrificing the craft of writing. We wanted to make a place where a diversity of voices, languages, and styles of presentation can break down disciplinary silos and connect different generations of readers and writers worldwide.
In PLATFORM we have created this new place online where graduate students, adjuncts, architects, preservationists, urban planners, and faculty from various disciplines—architecture, urban studies, planning, history, geography, art, film, literature, cultural studies—can find a common ground for debate and action. Since our launch on June 24, 2019, we have published 52 essays, with two articles posted most weeks.
PLATFORM has featured discussions on breaking news—like the mass-shooting at Walmart this summer (Willa Granger, “‘The Eyes of Texas are Upon You’,” Aug. 15; Robert Alexander González, “Bullets Over the Borderlands: Where Do We Memorialize the Dead?” part 1 and part 2, Nov. 4 and Nov. 11), and urgent discoveries (Alice T. Friedman, “Max Ewing’s Closet and Queer Architectural History” part 1 and part 2, Oct. 10 and Oct. 21). Our authors have taken on controversial contemporary topics (Lucas Schmitz, “Die Frauen Der Revolution Straße”/”Women of Revolution Street,” Dec. 2; Prem Chandavarkar, “The State of the Nation Seen Through an Urban Design Competition,” Dec. 12), and have called for action with regard to social labor and housing (Joy Knoblauch et al., “Raising a Family in the Academy,” July 18; Patricia A. Morton, “Herbert Gans, Displacement, and the Real Estate State,” Sept. 9). They have contributed photo essays that critically assess the state of our cities (Joseph Heathcott, “Urban Agenda: Beneath National Party Politics Lay Cities in Grave Distress,” June 24; Michael S. Dodson, “Excavating the Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi, India,” Oct. 14), have introduced us to new modes of digital publishing (David R. Ambaras et al., “Building a Multivocal Spatial History: SCALAR and the ‘Bodies and Structures’ Project,” part 1, part 2, and part 3, June 24, July 1, and Aug. 19), and offered new concepts of teaching (Jessica Ellen Sewell and Andrew Scott Johnston, “Rethinking History in Design through the History of Materials,” part 1 and part 2, Nov. 18 and Nov. 25).
During the first six months of publication, readership has been robust and geographically widespread. PLATFORM received over thirteen thousand unique visitors and nearly twenty-nine thousand page-views, with approximately 23 percent of visitors arriving by clicking links on Facebook and 11 percent clicking links on Twitter (PLATFORM promotes every post on those sites, as well as on Instagram). PLATFORM has also amassed nearly twelve hundred “subscribers,” who receive weekly emails announcing new articles (if you would like to subscribe, enter your email address at the bottom of this or any PLATFORM page). Visitors to PLATFORM’s site to date hail from 103 countries.
Global, diverse audiences deserve diversity of content, beyond the Global North and beyond the English-speaking world. The so-called global turn in architecture and related disciplines has been blind to the hegemony of English in constructing architectural discourse. Language hegemony creates distance and reinforces marginalization, be it in classrooms in the United States or in other parts of the world. We are making an effort to communicate in multiple languages to reach out to vast constituencies with voices that need to be heard. PLATFORM has thus launched a trans-lingual project to publish posts in the writer’s language of origin and in English translation, in addition to English-language essays. As of today (January 6, 2020), two dual-language posts have been published: one in Spanish (Guadalupe Garcia, “Routes/Rutas,” Nov. 14) and one in German (Schmitz, “Die Frauen Der Revolution Straße,” Dec. 2). More bilingual posts will appear soon, including of translations of important primary documents. We aim to publish not only more posts in Spanish and German, but also in Chinese, Arabic, French, Portuguese, and more.
This remarkable success and reach indicate that there is an appetite—growing, we believe—for the intergenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations that PLATFORM fosters. To help us in this endeavor, in September 2019 we invited three contributing editors, Sarah Lynn Lopez (University of Texas, Austin), Kishwar Rizvi (Yale University), and Mira Rai Waits (Appalachian State University) to join our masthead and help diversify the leadership and content of PLATFORM.
The global built environment is too important to be left to any one discipline or profession, to the Global North or South, or to unheeding politicians. Collectively, we need to make a difference. It begins here, with you. Thank you for reading PLATFORM. Please write for PLATFORM, too! Please contribute your thoughts and ideas—we are eager to share them and your writing with our readers worldwide. May the New Year bring hope and positive transformation.
Swati Chattopadhyay, Marta Gutman, Zeynep Kezer, Matthew Lasner
Founding Editors of PLATFORM
January 6, 2020
