Dark Matter: Revisiting The Architecture of Coal in Post-War Europe

We are excited to invite submissions for DARK MATTER: Revisiting the Architecture of Coal in Post-War Europe, an in-person conference hosted by the ACME (Architecture of Coal in Modern Europe) project (ERC Advanced Grant, 2024–2030), taking place at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin on 5+6 November 2026.

In the decades following the Second World War, coal developed from an extracted energy source to a multi-dimensional modernist project. Across Europe, coal mining became an epicentre of technological optimism, democratic politics, urban regeneration, and mass communication—its architectures and spaces redefined as symbols and sites of progress, welfare-state ambition, and conduits for reorganising everyday life. This conference invites papers that revisit coal, for better and worse, as a formative force in twentieth-century architectural, institutional, and media practices.

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that explore (but are not limited to) the following thematic territories:

• Architecture of coal modernisation
• Visual culture, media, and propaganda
• Modernisation and infrastructure
• Institutional care for labour (baths, hospitals, schools, clubs, libraries, social networks)
• Housing and settlement
• Transitions and afterlives of extractive landscapes 

Keynote speaker: Łukasz Galusek (Director, Silesian Museum, Katowice) 

Guest expert panellists include: Tom Avermaete, Stefan Berger, Carola Hein, Imre Szeman (others to be confirmed) 

Submission details

• What to submit: 300-word abstract + 150-word biography
• Deadline: 31 March 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 30 April 2026
• Apply via: https://forms.office.com/e/pA835e4JBk 

 Selected contributors will be invited to publish their conference paper in an edited volume (2027). 

 For queries, please contact: [email protected]