Middle East Technical University Graduate Program in Architectural History organizes a series of symposiums bi-annually, open to graduate students and researchers who have recently completed their Ph.D. studies.

From farms and agricultural homesteads that served historic markets to ethnic food enclaves, the city is an experiment in democracy, architecture, and flavor. How has the Washington metropolitan area facilitated the production and dissemination of foodstuffs across the region? How have patterns of work shaped patterns of eating? How does a focus on food generate new types of research methodologies?

This issue of Stoà does not question the need to recognise, manage and capitalise on these contingencies, be they theoretical, cultural, disciplinary, technical, legal, economic, political, social or otherwise. Rather, it seeks to explore how this can be done, seeking to understand the methods and approaches through which disruption can be productively used.

Production Studies research is concerned with mainstream design-labour relations and its histories; with wider practices where design or intellectual labour is separated from production; and—recognising that in many parts of the world building takes place through self-organised processes—with other modes and possibilities of  building production.