The architecture of borderlands is often unique to itself. This is because borderlands often belong to nobody, as was the case in for instance the English/Scottish ‘marches’. Borders can delineate physical geographies, as in the Pyrenees which separate France from Spain, or political lines, such as the 49th Parallel which separates the United States from Canada. Each condition often generates architectures of its own, whether for instance ski resorts in the French/Italian Alps or British Army/RUC checkpoints between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Walls and other physical barriers between one country and another, as in Berlin, or between one community and another, as in Jerusalem or Belfast, have received much critical attention from architectural historians and the political and social significance of these border manifestations is widely recognised. Papers for the conference might address such physical structures however, it is not only these to which this conference is addressed. Here we also wish scholars to consider individual buildings, complexes of buildings, or designed landscapes, which are a direct response to their physical location or their political role within a borderland. Architecture that exhibits commonality or neutrality, dependent upon its situation and context – buffer zones, no-mans-lands, and transitional spaces have spawned a range of programmes that facilitate either community interaction and cross cultural dialogue or conflict, smuggling, escapes, rituals, parades, performances, protests and other kinds of border events.