About this Event
This event marks the launch of The Journal of Architecture special issue “Peripheries–Peripherocene,” co-edited by Cameron McEwan (Northumbria University) and Andreas Lechner (TU Graz). It brings together architects, writers, and researchers whose work reads the periphery as a site of critical and creative possibility. An afternoon symposium (14:00-17:00) is followed by an exhibition opening and journal launch (18:00-21:00).
Much of the world’s urban growth happens less in urban centres and ever more at urban peripheries: in suburbs, operational landscapes, waste lands, and the spaces between city and region. This symposium and exhibition explore the periphery as the defining spatial condition of the Anthropocene, and the place where we can make a difference. The urban periphery is central to urban development processes and the spatial and ecological crises of the present times, yet it where the pressures of climate, ecology, infrastructure, and everyday life seem least examined. We need new ways of seeing, representing, and thinking. We need new aesthetic and conceptual languages for the periphery in the time of the Anthropocene. This symposium, exhibition, and journal issue investigate peripheries from Berlin’s Tiergarten as an “inner periphery,” the operational landscape of peripheral Graz, a transect in Berlin’s Panke river, Newcastle’s robust regional landscape, Cumbernauld and its environs, the smooth space of transit between Penn Station and JFK airport in New York, the Las Vegas desert, the land around Stromness in Orkney, and Kyiv’s outskirts.
Symposium
Saturday 21 November 2026, 14:00–17:00
Speakers:
Sandra Bartoli and Silvan Linden, Büro für Konstruktivismus, Berlin
Lorens Holm, Geddes Institute
Andreas Lechner, TU Graz
Nicky Thomson and Rowan Mackinnon-Pryde, Studio Niro
Shaun Young, Studio Reiver
Chaired by Cameron McEwan, Northumbria University
Exhibition opening and journal launch
Saturday 21 November 2026, 18:00–21:00
Exhibition continues
22 November – 1 December, 09:00–16:00
Venue
Custom Lane, 1 Customs Wharf, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 6AL
Exhibition curators
Cameron McEwan and Shaun Young
Journal issue
Peripheries–Peripherocene, edited by Cameron McEwan and Andreas Lechner, The Journal of Architecture, vol. 31, no. 2 (2026), published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis on behalf of RIBA.
Contributors
Sandra Bartoli, Stanley Cho, Cida de Aragon, Petra Eckhard, Daniel Gethmann, Lorens Holm, Elisa Iturbe, Andreas Lechner, Steffen Lehmann, Silvan Linden, Cameron McEwan, Studio Niro (Nicky Thomson and Rowan Mackinnon-Pryde), Alican Taylan, Joseph Wilson, Joe Wojewoda, and Shaun Young.
More information
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @peripherocene @_cameronmcewan
Event venue & nearby stays
Custom Lane, 1 Customs Wharf, Leith, United Kingdom
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