Announcements

• CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, JOELHO 18, “Ground Floor”

  2026-02-26

  EDITORS

  Nuno Grande, Nuno Correia, Paula del Río

  “Ground floor” is an architectural concept that synthesises two spatial relationships: one with the soil; the other with the collective, the common. Through the ground floor, a building is tied to the earth and a transition is established between the above and subterranean levels, if they exist. The ground floor is, therefore, an ‘in-between space’, a horizontal interstice that welcomes the collective life outside and where all individual lives inside converge on a daily basis. It is also where architecture expresses its most triumphant relationship with the surrounding world, through features such as high ceilings, atriums, staircases, ramps, colonnades or glazed openings.

  In a broader sense, the ‘ground floor’ can be understood as the ‘city ground’, the outside space where all meetings and demonstrations take place, where all urbanity springs from.

  Similarly, the ground floor stands as a boundary where the strict separation of public and private is blurred, opening up a field of communal opportunities. It could be the Greek agora that extends into the stoa, the Roman forum that complements the basilica, the square preceding the shops' arcade, the porch of a place of worship, a bustling café terrace or marketplace, a courtyard or cloister where silence is kept. A city that enhances and revitalises its commercial, institutional and residential ground-floors is certainly more free, more open and more democratic.

  Much of what a building or a city offers us comes into play at the magical moment when we cross that level, when we use that interface. That is also why, when cities undergo significant political, social and cultural mutations, it is also on the ground floor that the main symptoms are felt: an economic crisis, a functional change, a security lockdown.

  For JOELHO 18, we welcome articles that highlight how the ground floor of a building, a city, or both, is conceived, designed, built, or transformed, nowadays as in the past, stressing its role as a true architectural and urban ‘threshold’.

  The relevance of this subject becomes even more pertinent at a time when many lines of debate are being intersected, related to: collaborative forms of housing and the need to reduce the use of private cars in city centres; the ideal ground occupation density and the need for a renaturalization of urban spaces; the functional redistribution of services and places of work, aiming for urban proximity and walkability.

  The subject of the articles may be within the strict domain of architecture, taking the analysis of cases related to a domestic scale, when the ground floor is a transitional device between public and private; or in the field of urban design, considering the case of great buildings that work as urban facilities or infrastructures.

  Since this is an intersectional theme by nature, many conceptual starting points can be taken – one building or a part of it, one public space, one city, one historic reference, one drawing.

   

  CALENDAR

  Call for abstracts opening – 26^th February 2026

  Deadline for abstract submission – 4^th May

  Notification of acceptance for publication – 8^th June

  Deadline for full paper submission – 21^st September

  Notification of peer review report – 2^nd November

  Final full paper submission – 30^th November

  Launch – Spring 2027

   

  ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in submit an abstract (up to 500 words) and a brief CV (100 words).

  We draw your attention to the fact that the information for authors made available in the digital platform “Impactum-Journals” refers mainly to the full paper submission. The selection of articles is made by the Editors based on the abstracts received.

  For any question related with this issue of JOELHO, contact the Editors to this e-mail address – nunocorreia@uc.pt

  Read More Read more about CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, JOELHO 18, “Ground Floor”

• CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, JOELHO 17, “Co-Operative Housing”

  2025-06-13

  EDITORS

  João Mendes Ribeiro, Nuno Correia, Nuno Travasso

  In the next issue of JOELHO we will address topics related with contemporary forms of housing. We use the expression “Co-Operative” both in the sense of alternative ways of having access to a house, and in the sense of alternative ways of inhabiting that house.

  For the former, cooperatives are an excellent example, of course, but it is not the only one. We are also interested in exploring different kinds of experiments, many of them bottom-up approaches, when a group of citizens take the initiative and organizes itself spontaneously to solve a problem that affects them all. Or to analyse good practices of housing policies that have proven successful in the fight against speculative markets. Whether those policies assume the form of governmental or local measures.

  For alternative ways of inhabiting a house, we think immediately about many recent experiments based on sharing some spaces of a house, where one can perform many daily activities that do not demand so much privacy. A currently popular and growing operating model usually referred to as “Collaborative Living”.

  For JOELHO 17, we welcome articles that can help us to framework a series of experiments carried out mostly since the beginning of the 21^st century. Although, the main focus of this publication may be the European context, we are very interested in learning more about many different practices that have been tested worldwide.

  Since the housing problem we are facing today is deeply rooted in the cultural developments occurred in the 20^th century, and many of the answers we are reaching have also important roots in the experiments and debate started during that period, researches related with the historic origins of those crucial subjects can also be very relevant to understand the recent developments of housing policies and new forms of housing.

  The analysis of examples and case studies related to public policies, institutional and financing arrangements, participatory processes, evolutionary housing, sharing of collective spaces, etc., is welcome.

  We are aware of a series of research projects developed recently related to the housing problem, and the topics we intend to address in the next edition of JOELHO. We hope that this publication will spark the interest of researchers involved in those projects, and that they will be willing to share their knowledge with us.

   

  CALENDAR

  Call for abstracts opening – 14^th May 2025

  Deadline for abstract submission – 28^th July, 2025

  Notification of acceptance for publication – 29^th September, 2025

  Deadline for full paper submission – 5^th January, 2026

  Notification of peer review report – 16^th February, 2026

  Final full paper submission – 16^th March, 2026

  Launch – Summer 2026

   

  ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in submit an abstract (up to 500) words and a brief CV (100 words).

  We draw your attention to the fact that the information for authors made available in the digital platform “Impactum-Journals” refers mainly to the full paper submission.

  For any question related with this issue of JOELHO, contact the editors to this e-mail address –

  nunocorreia@uc.pt

  Read More Read more about CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, JOELHO 17, “Co-Operative Housing”

• Call for Papers. JOELHO 16 “The Architecture of Inexact Respiration” [Submission deadline extended]

  2024-02-27

  Considering the multiple requests received, the submission deadline for full papers has been extended to 14th April 2024.

   

   

  Editors

  Armando Rabaça, Bruno Gil, João Branco, Alexandre Dias

   

  The lack of awareness of the limits of natural resources and an unrestricted faith in technology fostered the idea of a universal architecture, which dominated the first half of the twentieth century. The position in which we find ourselves today is not new, however, and can be illustrated by a century-old change of attitude in Le Corbusier’s work. In the end of the 1920s, Le Corbusier proposed “one single house for all countries, all climates: a house with exact respiration1. With “exact respiration” he meant a hermetic interior at 18 degrees Celsius throughout the year, involving a double wall or double-glazed façade—“mur neutralisant”—mechanical air conditioning being blown between the inner and outer panes. Le Corbusier first envisioned this system for the League of the Nations (1927) and the Centrosoyus Palace (1928–34). The failure of proper temperature control in built works such as the Centrosoyus and the Cité de Refuge (1928–33) and the works for Algiers, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro, with their practical exigencies of thermal requirements and aesthetic potentials, led to an interest in elementary techniques of environmental control. The most obvious example is perhaps the sunbreaker (brise-soleil), an architectural element of climate control that started to cover the flat geometry of his architecture and gradually acquired formal autonomy, as illustrated in the Mill Owners’ Association building in Ahmedabad (1951–54).

  The contemporary context of global environmental change and biodiversity loss reframes this debate, challenging architecture in two interrelated aspects, the reduction of carbon emissions at the level of both embodied and operational carbon. In addressing the issue of embodied carbon, existing buildings must be understood as reservoirs of energy resources, allowing possibilities for adaptation, reuse, repair, or recycling (as instigated by the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan). In addition, the specific context should carry weight in the selection of materials and adapted construction techniques, eventually seeking circular economy logic in which the life cycle of resources ideally transforms into an endless loop.

  The issue of operational carbon, or the energy performance of buildings, directly associated with the idea of comfort, can and should be addressed through design, the architect’s primary and privileged tool. The desired resilience and harmless energy behaviour of what is to be built require an understanding of the specificities of each particular context, that is, an understanding of the ability of materials, buildings, and urban arrangements as a whole to store or dissipate energy as needed. This implies research into typological solutions, suitable geometries for a specific geography and climate, the efficiency and versatility of section and plan of these geometries and the implications in natural heating and ventilation, the properties and local availability of materials, and structural and infrastructural strategies.

  This is, in essence, a global problem requiring different local solutions and is particularly challenging in intermediate temperate climates such as the Mediterranean, as despite the absence of extreme temperatures—which facilitates the absence of mechanical solutions—these may vary considerably both between seasons and during the day. The Mediterranean climate is indeed characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, and it is worth remembering that it this type of climate is not restricted to the area of the Mediterranean basin. It is characteristic of a series of geographies between 30 and 45 degrees north and south, such as in western South and North America, Chile and California, the far south of the African continent and in Oceania. Its seasonal and daily thermal variability escapes unidirectional prescriptions which are possible in extreme climates and requires either capturing (cold climates) or dissipating (hot climates) heat. Perhaps for this reason, architectural research on the thermal performance of buildings has avoided these intermediate geographies between the easier-to-define north and south, with the overwhelming majority of studies conducted in thermally extreme climates. 

  Nevertheless, Mediterranean climate geographies are extremely rich in architectural heritage. Different economic, social, cultural, material, constructive, formal, and typological realities coexist in these geographies, providing us with a wide reservoir of traditional knowledge and architectural solutions for an alternative to the universal architecture of “exact respiration.” It is a richness directly related to the benign nature of the climate, having fostered the development of urban and architectural solutions in which the boundaries between interior and exterior have diluted, expanded and gained depth, with resonances in the ways of living and using space. Taking advantage of different thermal typologies, often with hybrid configurations to address the dynamics of atmospheric alternation, such as porches, courtyards, pergolas, arcades, greenhouses, and caves, spatial mechanisms were developed and became deeply rooted in immemorial cultural habits.

  While the shift towards an architecture of “inexact respiration” means to abandon the standards of comfort provided by mechanical control and assume a more tolerant culture towards the relationship between architecture and the environment, where architecture itself provides or contributes significantly to the solution, this shift does not mean a return to the vernacular. It means the development of a new (or renewed) architecture capable of expressing the Zeitgeist and the central problems of sustainability and the energy crisis that characterize it. If architecture is cyclically mobilized towards its legitimation as a language—as we witnessed in the Enlightenment, in the modern movement and in postmodernism—how is this urge towards a sustainable architecture defining a new, contemporary language? How is architectural practice exploring the legacy of the past in defining critical architectural solutions? What typological and material experiences point to an in-depth revision of carbon-based architectural and building solutions? What is the relationship of these solutions with use and ways of living? Taking into account that the most sustainable position is to maintain existing buildings, what can we learn from the practice of reuse and adaptation?

  Issue #16 of Joelho – Journal of Architectural Culture seeks contributions that critically address these and other related topics, particularly in the context of the Mediterranean climate, broadly understood. Topics may range from landscape, urban design and architecture to materials and building systems. Qualitative approaches are expected, taking into account the impact on the perceived comfort of spaces resulting from factors such as the active posture of the user, the thermal sensitivity of different cultures, clothing, the physical properties of materials, specific microclimates, cultural habits, regional economies, material availability, and specific labour, among others. Graphic material illustrating such sought-after critical thinking is encouraged, whether authorial or not.

   

   “A cette heure d’interpénétration générale, de techniques scientifiques internationales, je propose : une seule maison pour tous pays, tous climats : la maison à respiration exacte.” Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme(Paris: G. Crès, 1930), 64.

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the 5-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until April 14th, 2024. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors until May 31st, 2024.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until July 15th, 2024.

  Read More Read more about Call for Papers. JOELHO 16 “The Architecture of Inexact Respiration” [Submission deadline extended]

• CALL FOR PAPERS. JOELHO 16. “The Architecture of Inexact Respiration”

  2023-10-25

  Editors

  Armando Rabaça, Bruno Gil, João Branco, Alexandre Dias

   

  The lack of awareness of the limits of natural resources and an unrestricted faith in technology fostered the idea of a universal architecture, which dominated the first half of the twentieth century. The position in which we find ourselves today is not new, however, and can be illustrated by a century-old change of attitude in Le Corbusier’s work. In the end of the 1920s, Le Corbusier proposed “one single house for all countries, all climates: a house with exact respiration1. With “exact respiration” he meant a hermetic interior at 18 degrees Celsius throughout the year, involving a double wall or double-glazed façade—“mur neutralisant”—mechanical air conditioning being blown between the inner and outer panes. Le Corbusier first envisioned this system for the League of the Nations (1927) and the Centrosoyus Palace (1928–34). The failure of proper temperature control in built works such as the Centrosoyus and the Cité de Refuge (1928–33) and the works for Algiers, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro, with their practical exigencies of thermal requirements and aesthetic potentials, led to an interest in elementary techniques of environmental control. The most obvious example is perhaps the sunbreaker (brise-soleil), an architectural element of climate control that started to cover the flat geometry of his architecture and gradually acquired formal autonomy, as illustrated in the Mill Owners’ Association building in Ahmedabad (1951–54).

  The contemporary context of global environmental change and biodiversity loss reframes this debate, challenging architecture in two interrelated aspects, the reduction of carbon emissions at the level of both embodied and operational carbon. In addressing the issue of embodied carbon, existing buildings must be understood as reservoirs of energy resources, allowing possibilities for adaptation, reuse, repair, or recycling (as instigated by the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan). In addition, the specific context should carry weight in the selection of materials and adapted construction techniques, eventually seeking circular economy logic in which the life cycle of resources ideally transforms into an endless loop.

  The issue of operational carbon, or the energy performance of buildings, directly associated with the idea of comfort, can and should be addressed through design, the architect’s primary and privileged tool. The desired resilience and harmless energy behaviour of what is to be built require an understanding of the specificities of each particular context, that is, an understanding of the ability of materials, buildings, and urban arrangements as a whole to store or dissipate energy as needed. This implies research into typological solutions, suitable geometries for a specific geography and climate, the efficiency and versatility of section and plan of these geometries and the implications in natural heating and ventilation, the properties and local availability of materials, and structural and infrastructural strategies.

  This is, in essence, a global problem requiring different local solutions and is particularly challenging in intermediate temperate climates such as the Mediterranean, as despite the absence of extreme temperatures—which facilitates the absence of mechanical solutions—these may vary considerably both between seasons and during the day. The Mediterranean climate is indeed characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, and it is worth remembering that it this type of climate is not restricted to the area of the Mediterranean basin. It is characteristic of a series of geographies between 30 and 45 degrees north and south, such as in western South and North America, Chile and California, the far south of the African continent and in Oceania. Its seasonal and daily thermal variability escapes unidirectional prescriptions which are possible in extreme climates and requires either capturing (cold climates) or dissipating (hot climates) heat. Perhaps for this reason, architectural research on the thermal performance of buildings has avoided these intermediate geographies between the easier-to-define north and south, with the overwhelming majority of studies conducted in thermally extreme climates. 

  Nevertheless, Mediterranean climate geographies are extremely rich in architectural heritage. Different economic, social, cultural, material, constructive, formal, and typological realities coexist in these geographies, providing us with a wide reservoir of traditional knowledge and architectural solutions for an alternative to the universal architecture of “exact respiration.” It is a richness directly related to the benign nature of the climate, having fostered the development of urban and architectural solutions in which the boundaries between interior and exterior have diluted, expanded and gained depth, with resonances in the ways of living and using space. Taking advantage of different thermal typologies, often with hybrid configurations to address the dynamics of atmospheric alternation, such as porches, courtyards, pergolas, arcades, greenhouses, and caves, spatial mechanisms were developed and became deeply rooted in immemorial cultural habits.

  While the shift towards an architecture of “inexact respiration” means to abandon the standards of comfort provided by mechanical control and assume a more tolerant culture towards the relationship between architecture and the environment, where architecture itself provides or contributes significantly to the solution, this shift does not mean a return to the vernacular. It means the development of a new (or renewed) architecture capable of expressing the Zeitgeist and the central problems of sustainability and the energy crisis that characterize it. If architecture is cyclically mobilized towards its legitimation as a language—as we witnessed in the Enlightenment, in the modern movement and in postmodernism—how is this urge towards a sustainable architecture defining a new, contemporary language? How is architectural practice exploring the legacy of the past in defining critical architectural solutions? What typological and material experiences point to an in-depth revision of carbon-based architectural and building solutions? What is the relationship of these solutions with use and ways of living? Taking into account that the most sustainable position is to maintain existing buildings, what can we learn from the practice of reuse and adaptation?

  Issue #16 of Joelho – Journal of Architectural Culture seeks contributions that critically address these and other related topics, particularly in the context of the Mediterranean climate, broadly understood. Topics may range from landscape, urban design and architecture to materials and building systems. Qualitative approaches are expected, taking into account the impact on the perceived comfort of spaces resulting from factors such as the active posture of the user, the thermal sensitivity of different cultures, clothing, the physical properties of materials, specific microclimates, cultural habits, regional economies, material availability, and specific labour, among others. Graphic material illustrating such sought-after critical thinking is encouraged, whether authorial or not.

   

   “A cette heure d’interpénétration générale, de techniques scientifiques internationales, je propose : une seule maison pour tous pays, tous climats : la maison à respiration exacte.” Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Paris: G. Crès, 1930), 64.

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the 5-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until March 31st, 2024. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors until May1st, 2024.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until July 1st, 2024.

  
  
  
  

  Read More Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS. JOELHO 16. “The Architecture of Inexact Respiration”

• CALL FOR PAPERS. JOELHO 15. “Architectural Design as a Co-Creation Process”. [Submission deadline extended]

  2023-01-03

  Considering the multiple requests received, the submission deadline for full papers has been extended to 28th February 2023.

   

   

  Guest Editors

  Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Luís Miguel Correia, José António Bandeirinha

    

  The central theme of JOELHO 15 is urban architecture of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, with a special focus on the way in which a project is revealed as a space for collective engagement. The processes of producing architecture and urban environments have always arisen from transformations brought about by the collective, i.e. by society. The city, moreover, is the space in which these changes are engraved in our collective memory, their origins embedded in cultural, social, economic-financial, and political phenomena, among others.

  The intense social and artistic movements that emerged from the political struggles of the 1960s spurred many European architects to seek new ways to conceive of the public as the ultimate consumers of architecture. Answers were sought to the challenges engendered by the urgent need to house urban populations who were living in precarious conditions; new paradigms for architectural education were being advanced; and the uses of public space in the city became a prominent concern. In response, architects were motivated to explore design practices that involved members of the public in the decision-making process, especially during certain of its stages. Architecture became more deeply embedded in human concerns. Nevertheless Giancarlo De Carlo’s pilot projects for Urbino and Terni, the housing programmes proposed by the Service of Local Ambulatory Support (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local – SAAL), or Sherry R. Arnstein’s theoretical framework (“A Ladder of Citizen Participation”), among other contributions, created a legacy that architectural projects of the later 1980s and 1990s would abandon.¹ This was mainly due to an emerging neoliberal political model, the emergence of the star system in architecture, and the limitations of such participatory processes.

  Today, political, sociocultural, economic, financial and, in particular, climate crises pervade the five continents to varying degrees. This has reawakened a need to foster greater dialogue between those responsible for spatial planning—architects, urban planners, and landscape architects—and the publics, whether those who live, study, and work in a particular environment or its visitors. In this context, the promotion of urban regeneration processes is taking place both in the cities’ central areas, in which tourists and a new generation of citizens are welcomed, and in their outskirts, with the aspiration of offering better conditions for the local communities. In many of these processes, citizens are being invited to participate along with design technicians to develop solutions.

  This openness of the citizenry to participative processes of urban regeneration has brought about a growth in public awareness of the issues associated with social inclusion and climate change, such as the seventeen sustainable development objectives established by the UN (see https://sdgs.un.org/goals).

  Broadly speaking, participatory processes operate on the principle of combating inequalities and guaranteeing an inclusive life for all, as in the case of feminist, intersectional perspectives. The present-day practice of architecture is inherently linked to these global debates. As always, the city constitutes a privileged space where society’s intentions for the future are expressed.

  The artistic, social and technical dimensions of the architect’s work, which left a mark on 20^th-century practices, have accordingly evolved to engage different forms of thought and knowledge, leading many architects to rethink their position towards the architectural project. In this revision of the architect’s role, it is now, more than ever, necessary to reflect on new epistemological and evolutionary aims, with attention to the ontological crisis of the city, as the low density of urban sprawl entails challenges to the city as an eminently political entity.

  JOELHO 15 will explore whether citizen participation in the different stages of the design process has, or may have, tangible consequences for the way the city is projected and experienced. Researchers, educators, and professionals are invited to submit proposals that can contribute to critical discussion on the co-creation of architectural and urban spaces.

  We welcome contributions that relate theoretical positioning to practical cases, through graphic and written architectural argumentation, which may be complemented by interdisciplinary dialogue with scientific areas relevant to the co-creation process. Proposals should be framed within the following areas:

  1. a critical review of processes, projects, and works of architectural and urban design that are the result of participatory processes;
  2. contemporary co-creative practices that include new models and tools for participation that affect action upon the city;
  3. pedagogical or research experiments that apply models and tools of urban design and participatory architecture in particular contexts.

  ¹ Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” JAIP, Vol. 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–224.

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the 5-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until February 28^th, 2023. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors until May 1^st, 2023.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until June 1^st, 2023.

   

  Read More Read more about CALL FOR PAPERS. JOELHO 15. “Architectural Design as a Co-Creation Process”. [Submission deadline extended]

• Call for papers - JOELHO - Journal of Architectural Culture #15 - Architectural Design as a Co-Creation Process

  2022-09-25

  JOELHO #15

  Architectural Design as a Co-Creation Process

   

  Guest Editors

  Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Luís Miguel Correia, José António Bandeirinha

    

  The central theme of JOELHO 15 is urban architecture of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, with a special focus on the way in which a project is revealed as a space for collective engagement. The processes of producing architecture and urban environments have always arisen from transformations brought about by the collective, i.e. by society. The city, moreover, is the space in which these changes are engraved in our collective memory, their origins embedded in cultural, social, economic-financial, and political phenomena, among others.

  The intense social and artistic movements that emerged from the political struggles of the 1960s spurred many European architects to seek new ways to conceive of the public as the ultimate consumers of architecture. Answers were sought to the challenges engendered by the urgent need to house urban populations who were living in precarious conditions; new paradigms for architectural education were being advanced; and the uses of public space in the city became a prominent concern. In response, architects were motivated to explore design practices that involved members of the public in the decision-making process, especially during certain of its stages. Architecture became more deeply embedded in human concerns. Nevertheless Giancarlo De Carlo’s pilot projects for Urbino and Terni, the housing programmes proposed by the Service of Local Ambulatory Support (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local – SAAL), or Sherry R. Arnstein’s theoretical framework (“A Ladder of Citizen Participation”), among other contributions, created a legacy that architectural projects of the later 1980s and 1990s would abandon.¹ This was mainly due to an emerging neoliberal political model, the emergence of the star system in architecture, and the limitations of such participatory processes.

  Today, political, sociocultural, economic, financial and, in particular, climate crises pervade the five continents to varying degrees. This has reawakened a need to foster greater dialogue between those responsible for spatial planning—architects, urban planners, and landscape architects—and the publics, whether those who live, study, and work in a particular environment or its visitors. In this context, the promotion of urban regeneration processes is taking place both in the cities’ central areas, in which tourists and a new generation of citizens are welcomed, and in their outskirts, with the aspiration of offering better conditions for the local communities. In many of these processes, citizens are being invited to participate along with design technicians to develop solutions.

  This openness of the citizenry to participative processes of urban regeneration has brought about a growth in public awareness of the issues associated with social inclusion and climate change, such as the seventeen sustainable development objectives established by the UN (see https://sdgs.un.org/goals).

  Broadly speaking, participatory processes operate on the principle of combating inequalities and guaranteeing an inclusive life for all, as in the case of feminist, intersectional perspectives. The present-day practice of architecture is inherently linked to these global debates. As always, the city constitutes a privileged space where society’s intentions for the future are expressed.

  The artistic, social and technical dimensions of the architect’s work, which left a mark on 20^th-century practices, have accordingly evolved to engage different forms of thought and knowledge, leading many architects to rethink their position towards the architectural project. In this revision of the architect’s role, it is now, more than ever, necessary to reflect on new epistemological and evolutionary aims, with attention to the ontological crisis of the city, as the low density of urban sprawl entails challenges to the city as an eminently political entity.

  JOELHO 15 will explore whether citizen participation in the different stages of the design process has, or may have, tangible consequences for the way the city is projected and experienced. Researchers, educators, and professionals are invited to submit proposals that can contribute to critical discussion on the co-creation of architectural and urban spaces.

  We welcome contributions that relate theoretical positioning to practical cases, through graphic and written architectural argumentation, which may be complemented by interdisciplinary dialogue with scientific areas relevant to the co-creation process. Proposals should be framed within the following areas:

  1. a critical review of processes, projects, and works of architectural and urban design that are the result of participatory processes;
  2. contemporary co-creative practices that include new models and tools for participation that affect action upon the city;
  3. pedagogical or research experiments that apply models and tools of urban design and participatory architecture in particular contexts.

  ¹ Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” JAIP, Vol. 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–224.

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the 5-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until January 31^st, 2023. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors until April 1^st, 2023.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until May 1^st, 2023.

  Read More Read more about Call for papers - JOELHO - Journal of Architectural Culture #15 - Architectural Design as a Co-Creation Process

• Reminder of deadline for the submission to Joelho 14

  2022-01-19

  Dear Colleagues,   This is a reminder of the submission deadline of the call for papers for issue 14 of Joelho - Journal of Architectural Culture, titled   Digital Culture. What’s Next?
    The submission deadline for abstracts is February 28, 2022.   For full details, please visit the journal website:   https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho  https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho/announcement/view/219   We hope you will consider submitting a proposal.   The editors of Joelho 14, Armando Rabaça Bruno GIl Isabel Clara Neves Read More Read more about Reminder of deadline for the submission to Joelho 14

• Call for papers - JOELHO - Journal of Architectural Culture #14 - Digital Culture. What’s Next?

  2021-11-03

  Editors: Armando Rabaça, Bruno Gil, Isabel Clara Neves

   

  Digital Culture. What’s Next?

   

  We live in an era characterized by profound changes in the way we perceive and interact with the world, guided by the driving force of digital technologies, a phenomenon many authors have no hesitation in calling a Fourth Industrial Revolution. As diverse as these changes may be in the realm of architecture, they are inevitably embedded in a long-standing negotiation of formal codes, as suggested in Antoine Picon’s Digital Culture in Architecture (2010) and Mario Carpo’s The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011), ultimately leading Reinhold Martin to ask: “Is digital culture secular?”

  Despite the inevitable links with past codes, soft architecture technologies based on speculative intelligence are leaving behind what Nicholas Negroponte named “Soft Architecture Machines,” in which hardware still ruled, and opening a new era which is definitely distinct from the First or Second Machine Ages, as identified by Reyner Banham. Indeed, these digital changes are part of a deeper historical change. We are experiencing a growing political instability on a global scale, in which social inequality is increasing, while the worldwide urban population has surpassed the entire rural population. These phenomena have given rise to problems in urban policies, such as a lack of quality housing, social segregation, and the informal growth of cities. The evolving and nearly unavoidable phenomenon of climate change has been accompanied by a growing awareness of the effects of human activity on the planet and of the urgent need to achieve a measure of environmental sustainability. These changes all have direct consequences for the practice of architecture.

  After reflecting in issue 13 on how memory can act as a catalyst for architectural thinking within the singular mind of the creative individual, the particular interest of Joelho – Journal of Architectural Culture #14 is in how shared and collaborative processes, driven by the architect operating within this digital culture, are motivating experimental architectural and urban practices that are attempting to confront the associated political, environmental, and social concerns. Apart from the digital turn advanced by a rhetoric founded on aesthetic novelty or on innovative, conceptual ways of making, the undeniable strength of digital tools resides in how, and by what means, they might contribute to a more environmentally, politically and socially responsible architectural practice.

  The essays in this issue might address a variety of questions. What methods, tools and processes could contribute to this practice? How can these methods and tools foster intelligent practices directed towards a sustainable and socially responsible future in architecture and urban design? How might they act at the analytical and productive levels? Can artistic thinking and digital automatization find a subversive middle term? How might we ensure there will be a critical appropriation of those technologies?

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the five-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until February 28, 2022. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors by April 30, 2022.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until May 30, 2022.

  The issue will be published in February 2023.

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• Call for papers - JOELHO - Journal of Architectural Culture #13 - Memory, Memorabilia and the Making

  2020-11-23

  JOELHO 13

  Memory, Memorabilia and the Making

   

  Editors: Armando Rabaça, Bruno Gil

   

  In the new time consciousness of modernity, Jürgen Habermas tells us, historical memory gives place to an ahistorical use of the past, which explains the abstract language of avant-garde aesthetics. Suffice to think of authors such as Picasso and Le Corbusier and in the relationships their work establishes with the past. In their collections particulières, memorabilia ranged from vernacular to primitive and classical artefacts, the operative value of which rested in their aesthetic qualities, independently of their place in the continuum of history. The past was a source of raw material, opening new conceptual and morphological paths in the subversive processes of creation. As structuralists would put it, the past provided them with signs to be implicated in new sign structures, constructing new meanings.

  Exhausted the impulse of modernity and the post-modernist collage of historical iconography, how do architects use the past in defining new aesthetic paths? In today’s image-based culture, what operative role does memorabilia play in the processes of architectural creation, be it in morphological or in conceptual terms? How does memorabilia, and memory in general, act as a catalyst for artistic thinking?

  In a time when architectural design is increasingly subjected to building regulations, restricting its freedom as a creative act, Joelho - Journal of Architectural Culture is particularly interested in papers addressing the operative role of memory in the creative processes of architectural design.

   

  Submissions

  Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in and begin the 5-step process.

  First stage: potential contributors should submit the full article in English (4,000 to 6,000 words, plus footnotes and captions), an abstract (with no more than 1000 characters, including spaces) and illustrations until February 28^th, 2021. These will be subject to a blind peer-review process.

  Blind peer-reviews will be reported to the authors until April 15^th, 2021.

  Second stage: Articles found suitable for publication must take into account the reviewers’ comments. A revised article must be then submitted until May 15^th, 2021.

  Read More Read more about Call for papers - JOELHO - Journal of Architectural Culture #13 - Memory, Memorabilia and the Making