[Commlist] CfP Media Building

[Virtual Conference]
Media Building: Architecture, Communications and the Built Environment, 
7-10 July 2021
Hosted by the University of Salford and Northumbria University
Abstract Deadline: 11 April 2021

Since the emergence of the first newspapers, the relationship between 
place and content has been central to the media’s development. The 
spatial politics of media production could fundamentally shape its 
reception and circulation. If ‘the medium is the message’, then this 
applied equally to where media artefacts were created as to what was 
contained within them. Publishers quickly understood that, from both a 
commercial and philosophical perspective, landmark headquarters or 
publishing plants could help enforce the legitimacy and significance of 
their enterprises. Thus, structures such as the striking neo-gothic 
spires of the Chicago Tribune tower or the sleek art-deco exteriors of 
the Daily Express building in London offered compelling expressions of 
media power, modernity, and the aesthetics of mass communication, 
providing what Aurora Wallace describes as a “definable shape…a hook on 
which to hang some news about the media itself.” At the same time, media 
buildings became key nodes in the urban geography of communications, 
complementing editorial efforts to make and remake the modern metropolis.

This virtual conference invites contributions which explore the 
intersections between architecture, communications, and the built 
environment. While all papers will be considered, our focus is on print, 
broadcast, and digital media.
We are interested in the relationship between media content and media 
space, and the ways in which this relationship has changed over time.
What would press barons such as Joseph Pulitzer, who saw their buildings 
as “the central and highest point(s) of New World Civilization”, have 
made of Facebook’s Menlo Park Campus; an arguably more impressive yet 
radically different vision of media power? How have media buildings – 
both real and imagined - informed and given form to a range of 
sociopolitical, cultural and ideological constructs, becoming a 
“delivery mechanism” for ideas about objectivity, authority and 
identity? And what can the past and futures of media architecture tell 
us about the changing nature of media production, distribution, and 
consumption in the twenty-first century?

Potential topics and case studies include:
•	The rise and fall of the “newspaper row” (Fleet Street; Park Row; 
Picayune Place; etc.)
•	Media power and the modern skyscraper (China Media Group HQ, Beijing; 
the New York Times building, ‎Manhattan; Der Spiegel building, Hamburg; 
etc.)
•	Media cities and mediated cities (Facebook Menlo Park Campus, Silicon 
Valley; MediaCity, Salford Quays; Media City Park, Dubai; etc.)
•	Media buildings in popular culture (Superman and the Daily Planet; 
Janoth Publications and The Big Clock, etc.)
•	Liminal spaces, private architectures, media publics (blogging and the 
coffee shop; radical media and the built environment; media cultures in 
the ‘post-newsroom’ age; etc.)
•	Reuse, relocation, and the afterlife of media architecture (the 
redevelopment of the Chicago Tribune building as condominiums, the 
Chicago Bee building as a public library, etc.)
•	Media building design and journalism/newswork politics (soft power and 
media architecture; the ‘newsroom’ as a social and cultural construct; etc.)
•	Race, Ethnicity and Media Buildings (the Johnson Publishing building 
in Chicago, the Daily Forward building in New York, etc.)
•	Media architecture and the end of empire (Times of India building, 
Mumbai; National Media Group, Nairobi; Broadcasting House, London; etc.)

In the spirit of debate and inclusivity, we welcome proposals for either 
individual presentations (c. 20 minutes), or panels (c. 60-90 minutes) 
in a variety of formats: traditional conference papers, pre-recorded 
papers, roundtables, scholar-practitioner interviews, multimedia 
presentations, etc.
Accounting for the participation of international scholars, the 
conference will follow an afternoon format, with sessions taking place 
between 12 and 6pm BST. If you have a preference for appearing earlier 
or later in the day depending on your own time-zone, please highlight 
this as part of your abstract submission.

Send abstracts (400 words max), or any questions about format and 
presentations, to Carole O’Reilly [(c.oreilly /at/ salford.ac.uk)] and E. James 
West [(ejwestuk /at/ gmail.com)] by 11 April 2021.

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