Architects have always created or borrowed practical, conceptual, and discursive means to imagine, communicate, and achieve their work. Such means are neither neutral, nor are they mere technicalities. From the draftsman’s pencil and the ephemeral logic of formwork to the complex algorithms of artificial intelligence, the history of instruments is not simply one of technological progress, but of narratives intertwined with architectural theory, and of conceptual and procedural tools structuring design thinking.
Critical instruments refer to those means that exert a meaningful influence on architectural thinking, designing, and building. These instruments have prompted shifts in the profession’s values, ambitions, and social role, actively shaping how architects think, design, and engage with the world. Ultimately these are the transformations that have defined over time what architecture is. They encompass modes of representation (plans, sections, axonometric, exploded views), media of discourse (books, magazines, exhibitions, films, websites), and processes of negotiation (competitions, reviews, participatory platforms).
Historically, perspective and axonometric projections did not just offer new ways of seeing, but constructed new and specific understandings of space. Less visibly, the normative authority of building codes, the economic force of budgets, and the legal framework of contracts act as determinants of form and social outcome. Treatises, books, and exhibitions have served as instruments for codifying knowledge, disseminating ideologies, and debating architecture’s purpose. Instruments are never only technical: they carry cultural assumptions, institutional inertia, and political agenda, defining what is represented and built.
This issue of Studies in History and Theory of Architecture (sITA) invites critical, historical, and theoretical reflections on these instruments of architecture and their impact, past and present, with attention to their roles in shaping architectural thought, practice, and identity.
We welcome papers that deal with:
Critical histories of instruments and how they’ve transformed ways of thinking and making architecture;
Epistemologies of representation and translation between representational tools and their cultural implications;
Politics of instruments — access, exclusion, and gatekeeping through tool availability, including colonial, military, or industrial origins of architectural instruments and the role of norms, standards, and patents in shaping practice;
Activist and subversive uses of tools and media;
Instruments of discourse — treatises, manifestoes and books, professional and popular architectural magazines, exhibitions, events and installations as platforms of mediation; film, digital platforms, and open-source repositories;
Cross-cultural and comparative perspectives: indigenous, vernacular, or locally developed tools; translations and adaptations of tools between cultures and climates;
Critical studies of contemporary technologies and their effects on authorship, labour, and skill.