The CHR is pleased to announce the publication of a chapter by Kim Gurney in an edited volume about architecture and islands, Instituting Worlds. The book, edited by Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, is published by Routledge.

It shows the pertinence islands hold for critical spatial thinking and practice today – from offshore financial centres to immigrant detention camps, tourist havens to military bases, the architectures of islands concretise the forces at play in our contemporary, crisis-ridden societies.

Kim’s chapter, titled ‘Contact Zones: Walking Robben Island’, is inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s notion (2002) that walking can be an indicator species, telling us something useful about the broader health of an ecosystem. The chapter combines ambulatory thinking with archival references and artistic provocations to reconsider an idea of Robben Island as a potential model for interstitiality, as posited by Pamila Gupta. It pays close attention to “architectures of semaphore” or any apparatus for signalling encountered along the way.

‘Contact Zones’ sits alongside 16 other contributions combining case studies, critical historiography and pieces of experimental writing on a range of urban topics inspired by close readings of buildings – whether ruined, designed, projected, preserved or absent. Its global reach, innovative outlook, and rich material will be of interest to scholars and students in architecture, landscape architecture, geography, and urban design and planning, alongside arts and literary studies.