Issue 24 "Interferences: New Scenarios for the Architectural Project"
Deadline for submission of articles: October 21st, 2024
Expected publication date: June 2024
Call Text:
“The territory of architecture continues to suffer alterations, and its changing borders adopt new profiles, collide with obstacles, spill like oil into new fields and perhaps withdraw from others. The only certainty is that his “playing field” is no longer the same”.
Luis Moreno Mansilla, 2005
The constant evolution of different modes of architectural practice has accelerated in recent years due to a series of concomitant factors. Digitization, which was timidly integrated into studies at the beginning of the 1980s and overwhelming in the last decade, has transformed methods for accessing information, drawing and even thinking about projects. The logarithmic increase in laws and regulations has also contributed to this process, impacting construction methods, effective surface use and resource management in terms of economic repercussions. The culture of imagery and the spirit of constant immediacy that characterize our time have accelerated project-related processes, giving rise to the development of discourses with minimal theoretical content. Thus, the use of graphic symbols has become favoured as common means for solving fundamental problems.
In Spain, the increase in the number of schools and educational institutions has led to an increase in the number of professionals available for various assignments, a stark contrast to the levels observed prior to the economic crisis of 2008. Thus, the lack of work in offices and the clear impossibility of addressing all aspects of a project individually have necessitated the use of multidisciplinary teams with flexible structures. In this context, an architect’s ability to synthesize information has become their greatest asset, moving away from the heroic image of past eras. The abovementioned points can and should be thoroughly analysed to understand the new conditions of an architect's work and the mechanisms involved in the preparation of a project. Aware of the need to rethink the traditional practice of the profession, many schools have transformed their programs to increase the capacities, tools and competencies of their graduates, improving their potential employability.
These transformations extend beyond the discipline; they are structural in nature and provide new opportunities and development fields for those who are sufficiently qualified. We could discuss the socioeconomic changes from which large-scale planning mechanisms, migratory movements driven by climate change or armed conflicts, the emergence of innovative construction techniques, material recycling and associated evaluation processes, and the rehabilitation and repurposing of existing buildings or the need to limit our carbon footprint. All these changes present new opportunities for action and professional progress.
These phenomena have triggered a change in scale, increasing the interconnections, overlaps and contaminations between the disciplines related to a project. The intersection of all these parameters leads to a series of interferences, which, like a radio signal, produces a series of alterations in the original pattern. Moving away from any negative connotation inherent to the term, we interpret this phenomenon as a way to enrich the practice, offering potential for intervention or growth and providing tools and processes that allow us to deal effectively with an increasingly complex reality. Consequently, offices are organized by considering teams that includes all kinds of training and knowledge, in which the heroic condition embodied in a single individual is redistributed among the members of an entity, a necessarily collective intelligence. All these factors pose a professional challenge but also reveal new contexts of active intervention to be discovered.
In any case, there are precedents for this scenario in practice, at least in the past one hundred years. Avant-gardes revolutionized the early 20th century, fostering an enriching rapprochement between architecture and the other arts. The progressive development of innovative construction techniques and the appearance of programs linked to large infrastructures, urban or not, gave rise to new architectural types, causing a notable increase in the complexity of the technical process of projects, which favoured the entry of other professionals, particularly from the world of engineering. Additionally, rehabilitation and repurposing projects included historians and archaeologists, among other professionals.
Throughout the last third of the 20th century, the incorporation of new perspectives into architecture projects has been noted, originating from disparate but complementary disciplines, such as biology, sociology or geography, among others. Currently, major interventions are underway, the largest in the history of mankind, giving rise to projects associated with the creation and development of new municipalities. Many of these initiatives have been undertaken by large multidisciplinary teams that act at all scales, implementing educational projects of knowledge and awareness in schools, working with users or inhabitants of a location, and involving various state and supranational agents.
In this context, this call for submissions of articles is to explore, among other possible lines, the following:
- Ways in which architects work and associate with other professionals—engineers, artists, geographers, sociologists, biologists, etc.;
- Experiences of professionals trained in other disciplines who have worked on architecture, infrastructure or urban planning projects, with the aim of revealing approaches to support their practice in the immediate future;
- Alternative perspectives that have been developed from the fields of engineering, art and other disciplines in architecture and urbanism;
- Case studies on the formation of macro-offices during the 20th and 21st centuries, national and transnational, with particular intensity in times of crisis such as after the Second World War and others;
- Case studies of projects or trajectories characterized by multidisciplinarity;
- New ways of exercising the profession of architecture in a generalized context of scarce resources, where the social, economic, pedagogical or political dimension is a key factor.
The different issues addressed in this editorial are intended to channel and encourage deep reflection. The intention is to identify the new working conditions linked to architecture and urbanism, the different contexts of plural and varied action, and the new responsibilities of both disciplines. Articles that address a reflection on the formats for practising the profession, the roles associated with it and the way in which projects should be organized to respond to all unknowns and challenges mentioned are also expected.
