STOÀ Journal n. 6, Year III, Issue 1/3, Winter 2022

The Journey, and the consequent experiential knowledge, has long been a crucial part of the education of several generations of architects. The journey constituted the culmination of the learning process: it allowed to encounter different realities, in search of specific aspects within the complexity of their contexts (geographical, anthropological, political, social, cultural...).

Travelling performs as a tool for understanding architecture and its physical and contextual dynamics. The fact that travels are still significantly present element within teaching briefs and programmes is still a clear indication of the necessity of its role.

Observing is a methodological act: travelling is a tool for learning to understand the world through a perceptive truth that can be transmitted by teaching how to observe, by stimulating the reading and interpretation of places and space through different techniques or exercises and a subjective reading inspired by one’s own vision of the world at a time when there is a trend to travel without any movement or to consider to travel as a mere matter of consumerism.

Aim of this call is to carry out a recognition of the extent to which the tool of the journey is structured within the pedagogical dynamics of teaching architectural design, and how travelling, understood in its widest sense, is still an indispensable learning tool for the training of the architectural student. In which way does travelling, for the teacher and for the student, determine links between people and places, capable of substantiating material and immaterial relationships to be re-proposed within the project studios?

The intention is to collect critical essays and reports capable of reflecting on the potential, organisational mechanisms and effects that the experience of travel has on teaching. We accept contributions grounded on one or more of the following thematic frameworks:

  1. Journey as a design tool. How does the project of the journey influence the didactic organisation of design courses and how does the journey experience condense into the project? As a tool for understanding reality and interpreting space, how is it part of the teaching experience and how its presence, or absence, reappears in the actions put in place by the project?
  2. The tools of the journey for design teaching. The journey is an instrument of knowledge and as such includes different planes of interpretation of space through the use of the most traditional mediums such as sketches, drawings, models, photographs, videos, and even writings. How do these works, even when combined with each other, produce outcomes or effects that are useful for the advancement of the design process?
  3. The necessity of the journey. One of the consequences of the journey is the change of perspective, more or less conscious, of those who undertake it. It is an experience of exploration and field learning that occurs through movement in space, in changing time frames, generating additional tools in terms of vision, reading and interpretation of reality. In which teaching experiences is it possible to identify, at the methodological level, a condition of inheritance in terms of experience and proposals of methodological hybridisation?

We are interested in contributions that specifically engage with the following:

  • recognizing common traits in contemporary international pedagogical experiences;
  • understanding and describing approaches and cultural references, as well as inferences derived from other fields, such as history, art, philosophy, anthropology, literature, geography, sociology and economics usefull for teaching architecture;
  • exemplifying, through their conceptualization, specific didactic experiences, capable of becoming synthetic and effective expressions of a teaching know-how;
  • intertwining narratives and research, theories and conjectures, verifying the starting conditions by comparing them with the results of the teaching activities;
  • 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. 2500 characters) should be submitted to: [email protected]

Accepted abstracts will be announced by 26/09/2022. Contributions accepted for publication in the printed journal are expected by 07/11/2022 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 8 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.

The call is open to PhD students, researchers, professors and all scholars academically involved in teaching architecture.