When assembling Pidgin 27 in January and February of 2020, the editorial board—like many across the globe—was unaware of the circumstances that the spring would bring. In a matter of days, we have been inundated with information about the transmission of the virus and have locked ourselves up in an effort to slow its spread. It is safe to say we are cooped up, some of us far from home, clutching onto our digital communication machines to remain somehow connected to one another. This new virtual reality makes us acutely aware of what we have so suddenly lost. The physical spaces of intellectual encounter seem impossible to replicate from the safety of our self-isolated bubbles. And the viral menace outside our doors reminds us of our all-too-human physicality. As the necessities for architectural space shift around us, its significance becomes more obvious, as does the significance of critical discourse surrounding it.
Pidgin 27 includes contributions from:
Basile Baudez, Iman Fayyad, Mahadev Raman and Current Interests, Daniel Maslan and Mariah Smith, Jacob McCarthy, Jeffrey Zhenhua Liu, Esra Akcan, Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, Zach Colbert, Tiago Torres-Campos, Michelle Shu Meng, Eduardo Mediero, Dana Cuff, Erica Allen-Kim, Justine Yan, Maura Chen, André Tavares and Diego Inglez de Souza, and Frédéric Schnee.
*
Pidgin is a publication edited and designed by graduate students at the Princeton University School of Architecture. The name Pidgin encapsulates the spirit of the journal: a type of communication formed by a lack of common language, and a homonym for a low-tech, feathered dispatch. From its inception in 2005, Pidgin has provided a platform for the written and visual detritus of students, faculty, practitioners, historians, and theorists at Princeton and beyond, emphasizing current critical work across formats rather than polished products. By assembling a range of contributors and work, each issue creates an eclectic compilation of contemporary thought in architecture and its related disciplines.
