Due to modern computer generated imagery questions about the nature of heritage and design have opened up to redefinitions of the tangible and the intangible. What cultural impact do digital technologies today have on how we live in the ‘real world’? How should digital reconstructions of monuments and buildings be interlaced in material existence? How are hybrid online and physical events and artefacts to be archived in the future? How do the designers of cities and buildings engage with ‘being in the world’ through the medium of a screen? Indeed, what is the future of our physical artefacts, our constructed buildings, our cultural traditions and our interpersonal engagement? What, in short, remains of the ‘aura’ of the material object, as it relates to social readings and virtual experience.

Picking up strands of art, architecture, design and socio-cultural debates found throughout the twentieth century (and before) this conference welcomes reconsiderations of ‘heritage’ as both a tangible and an intangible concept. It seeks perspectives from design, architecture, cultural theory, social history, technology and the arts. It seeks to overlay our notions of the digital, on ideas of heritage and concepts of physicality and the present.

Deadline call for papers: 30 June 2021.