Amongst the many books of architectural libraries, some belong to the history of architecture while others belong to its teaching. The two histories often coincide; at other times, they follow separate trajectories. Some books have constructed theories; others have collected works, organised images, highlighted hidden references, defined genealogies, invented taxonomies, or brought previously dispersed materials into coherent assemblages. Through their use in schools, some have become working tools: included in course programmes, discussed during design reviews, copied, interpreted, and misunderstood. Their presence may be explicit or may operate in the shade, becoming embedded in the ways architectural design is learnt in schools.
stoà 19 will investigate the uses of books in the teaching and learning of architectural design. Contributions may originate from books, courses, schools, or specific pedagogical experiences, reconstructing the relationships through which texts and publications enter learning practices, are transmitted, reinterpreted, and transformed, including through uses that depart from the intentions that shaped their making. Books may be considered in their entirety or through partial forms of their presence within schools: excerpts, translations, reproductions, photocopies, images, or digital materials.
Editorial production associated with architectural research and schools is particularly extensive today: chairs, courses, research programmes, and academic institutions are producing books with increasing frequency. Yet this proximity to places of learning does not necessarily imply an effective presence within teaching practices. Between the production of books and their use lies a still largely unexplored territory, in which some publications become shared references and shape ways of teaching and learning architectural design, while others remain primarily expressions of the research from which they emerged.
Books from different periods and contexts have travelled across generations of teachers and students, languages and countries, acquiring different uses and meanings. Others have remained tied to very specific conditions or have achieved broad diffusion without actually entering teaching practices. Alongside references that have become canonical lies a broader constellation of peripheral or eccentric publications through which less evident genealogies of architectural education can be reconstructed.
Contributions may address, among others, the following questions:
– relationships between books and specific schools or pedagogical experiences;
– the possible transformation of books into operative tools for architectural design;
– the uses, appropriations, and reinterpretations of books within learning practices;
– the passage of books across different geographical, cultural, and temporal contexts;
– the distances between editorial production, architectural research, and teaching practices;
– the rediscovery of marginal or forgotten publications capable of challenging established genealogies.
We are interested in contributions that specifically engage with the following:
→ recognizing common traits in contemporary international pedagogical experiences;
→ exemplifying, through their conceptualization, specific didactic experiences, through reports, dialogues and interviews with students and 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 “position” ideas and (didactic) projects.
To submit an abstract, please complete the following form. Abstracts in Italian or English will be accepted.
For enquiries regarding abstracts: call@stoajournal.com
Deadline call for abstracts: 09/11/2026.
Accepted abstracts will be announced by 23/11/2026.
Abstracts will not be accepted from authors whose contributions have already been published in stoà 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.
The call is open to PhD students, researchers, professors and all scholars academically involved in teaching architecture.
Contributions accepted for publication in the printed journal are expected by 01/02/2027 in the form of a scientific essay, accompanied by notes, bibliography and images, for a maximum of 20.000 characters (3300 words, 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 magazine or book.
Accepted essays in their final version will undergo a process of Double-Blind Peer Review.
stoà is a Class A scientific journal for the sectors 08/D1 Architectural Design and 08/E2 Restoration and History of Architecture (Resolution No. 49 by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes – ANVUR, 20-02-2025) and 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).
More information on the call: stoajournal.com