5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In Anthropology for Architects, Ray Lucas (2020) suggests one way to “bridge the gap” between social science and the disciplines associated with the built environment is to recognize they share a common concern “with what it means to build and dwell”. He further suggests instead of producing a social science "of architecture”, it might be more innovative to engage in “creative re-use” of concepts from the building disciplines; where instead of social scientists “informing architects”, social scientists “gain greater knowledge of architectural thinking”. The creative borrowing might extend to methods. Lucas himself practices a type of “graphic” social science that uses “sketching, drawing, notation and mapping’ (i.e., the traditional “inscriptive practices” and “skillsets” of architects). But what about the sociology of architecture or better still an architectural sociology? Although debates about “modernity” and “postmodernity” saw widespread discussions of architecture in social theory and fields like cultural sociology (e.g., sociologists citing architectural authors such as Charles Jencks ), an argument could be made that architecture and the social sciences have cross-fertilized less in recent times. This session invites papers into how sociology and built environment practices share a common interest in surfaces, the life and death of built things, different sensory modalities, how buildings/cities/spatial settings become imbued with moods, metaphorical qualities, and cultural-symbolic meanings. Associated questions might be whether what we need is a "skyscraper or apartment tower sociology", a "retail or hospitality architecture sociology", or a sociology of specific micro-forms such as "corridors, windows, doorways, laneways, lobbies, etc."?