Within the body of knowledge that defines architectural design and the means to discuss and transmit it, the brief occupies an ambiguous position. Its status is that of a working document, rarely considered in the context – such as books, journals, conferences, and seminars – where academic and disciplinary discussions traditionally take place. At the same time, it is an indispensable and widely used tool in the teaching of architectural design.
The brief is generally a concise text that establishes objectives, tools and outcomes of the learning process, defining the framework within which the work of students and educators can unfold and be evaluated. Typically, such a document comprises various sections that present themes and delineate methodologies, outlining schedules, learning objectives, tools, assignments, bibliographic references, and practical or logistical considerations.
In combining these parts, the brief emerges as a distinct genre, tasked with the challenging responsibility of defining both the intellectual framework and the technology of teaching, suspended between bureaucratic necessities and speculative reflections, practices and critical stances. While remaining largely unknown, it is precisely these concise and indispensable documents that, year after year, develop, transmit, and implement approaches to teaching design.
This call for abstracts seeks to examine the limitations and possibilities of this tool, investigating both its form and its content in order to map historical transformations and contemporary attitudes.
The aim is to select contributions that critically examine the brief as a formative-operational instrument, uncovering how this device, by informing the practice of teacher and students, constitutes and reveals foundational relationships between power and knowledge, subjects and objects of studies, and between institutions, cultures, and practices.
We are interested in contributions that specifically engage with:
→ recognizing common traits in contemporary international pedagogical experiences;
→ exemplifying, through their conceptualization, specific didactic experiences, through reports, dialogues and interviews with internationally renowned professors, capable of becoming synthetic and effective expressions of a teaching know-how;
→ tracing a limit that can be shared by the scientific community, within which to critically and tendentiously “position” ideas and (didactic) projects, in order to build a a recognizable system by substantiating the reasons.
Abstracts in English or Italian (max. 1500 characters, with one keyword before the title), three images and a biography of 500 characters for each author should be submitted (in .doc file) to: redazione@stoajournal.com
Deadline: 03/03/2025
Accepted abstracts will be announced by 25/03/2025.
Contributions accepted for publication in the printed journal are expected by 26/05/2025 in the form of a scientific essay, accompanied by notes, bibliography and images, for a maximum of 18,000 characters (spaces, notes and bibliography included) and 7 images/pictures (of which you own the copyright of if they are free for use).
The proposed article must be original in its content. It should have not been published in another print or digital journal or book.
Accepted essays in their final version will undergo a process of Double-Blind Peer Review. Stoà is a scientific journal for non-bibliometric areas 08 – “Civil Engineering and Architecture” (Resolution no. 184 by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes-ANVUR, 27-07-2023).
The call is open to PhD students, researchers, professors and all scholars academically involved in teaching architecture.
Abstracts will not be accepted from authors whose contributions have already been published in Stoà 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.