For its upcoming issue, TECHNOLOGY | ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN seeks submissions exploring the multivalent relationships between technology and the history of the built environment. How are new technologies transforming historical research? How are practitioners and researchers utilizing technology to advance historic preservation, restoration, and archival practices? How have technological successes and failures shaped the evolution of architecture, landscapes, and cities around the globe? TAD welcomes manuscripts that define and analyze the connections, overlaps, and reciprocal impacts that occur between technology and history in any time period and at various scales. The editors strongly encourage submissions that highlight contributions of women, minorities, and other people traditionally excluded or underrepresented in the histories of technology, architecture, and design.

We find inflection points in the history of architecture, engineering, and construction when the invention or modification of technologies significantly shifted the trajectory of each discipline; we observe translations of technology from one field to another, and we see how technologies can facilitate new ways of understanding and analyzing the built environment. The history of architecture as technology is not limited to the study of physical objects such as buildings, materials, or tools, and their effects; it also illuminates the culture of technology—how it is developed, engaged, adopted, critiqued, restricted, or transformed by a diverse set of protagonists, including designers, engineers, governmental bodies, fabricators, contractors, and building users. Such research reveals the deep interconnections between social structures and building/construction technology.

Today, technology enables new research modes and methodologies in history and historic preservation. LiDAR and advanced sensor technologies are used to discover otherwise concealed information about past civilizations and forgotten communities. 3D scanning and GIS data facilitate research capacity for documenting and analyzing historically significant structures and sites. Virtual and augmented realities allow new forms of engagement with historic places. Traditional research methods in historical research continue to yield new insights as well. Through the study of archival collections, including technical material/product data, codes, specifications, project files, and construction documents, historians are theorizing new connections between the social, cultural, and technological contexts of designing and building in various cultures across multiple timeframes.

Topics for submission may include but are not limited to: the development of technologies that facilitate innovative forms of historical research; the role of technologies in shaping our understanding of the history of buildings, cities, and landscapes; the evolution of design, engineering, and construction techniques and tools; technology-related transformations of professional roles in the fields of design and construction; and insights gained through historical research about how and why people build.