Sophia Journal is an academic, open access, peer-reviewed journal, published by the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU) - Research group Architecture, Art, and Image (AAI) at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Portugal (FAUP), in collaboration with the association Cityscopio and their publishing imprint scopio Editions.
Users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts and/ or sequences of these articles and/ or visual essays for any non-commercial purpose, provided the author/s, Sophia Journal and scopio Editions are appropriately credited. Under this license, users are not allowed to remix, transform or build upon the published material.
Documenting and Staging Alternative Urban Living: Miyamoto Ryūji’s Cardboard Houses and its Materiality
This paper focuses on the Japanese photographer Miyamoto Ryūji (b. 1947) and his Cardboard Houses series (photographed between 1983 and 1996, and published collectively in 2003), examining how this body of work documents and presents an alternative form of human dwelling amid a rapidly changing urban landscape. It argues that the series illuminates possibilities for alternative ways of living that emerge in the interstices of urban space and underscores the cyclical nature of the city itself. By staging meticulously details of these houses and employing specific installation methods, Cardboard Houses invites viewers to reflect on the materiality and spatial experience of photography, as well as the impermanence of the subject matter. Situating the series within both Miyamoto’s broader oeuvre—which consistently pursues and captures the transience of architecture and the city—and a wider body of postwar Japanese works that express an enthusiasm for small-scale urban structures, this paper demonstrates how the series constitutes an aesthetically inflected and critical documentary of human dwelling, one that actively engages with the material conditions of the urban environment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mengfei Pan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Plywood Publics: Thin Politics in Carrie Mae Weems’s Painting the Town
Carrie Mae Weems’s Painting the Town documents the traces of a politically charged moment in the recent history of Portland, Oregon where protests in the name of Black lives in the summer of 2020 quickly became a nightly ritual as buildings, authorities, and demonstrators alike armored themselves for gradual escalation. These photographs of boarded-up storefronts with plywood painted to cover the liberatory messages once carried by graffiti stage a confrontation with the material reality of erasure. Unlike much of her photographic work, Weems’s series here is largely evacuated of space and human figures, and is presented in large scale and in full color. This paper considers this shift in light of Weems’s previous interrogations of architecture and urban space in series such as The Louisiana Project, Roaming, and Museums and in conversation with related developments in new art photography from artists such as Thomas Demand and Thomas Ruff, who have been positioned as protagonists of confrontational and surface-oriented work in “the tableau form.” Critically, the approach of Weems’s work in Painting the Town also supports both a formal and a political turn away from a theater of inclusion to a demand for justice, solidarity, and a resistance to erasure. Reading the photographs alongside recent theoretical work from Ruha Benjamin and Xine Yao advocating a renewed attention to the “thin description” of surfaces and to the liberatory potential of antisocial affect among marginalized communities suggests how survival necessitates a move beyond the reparative. Cover Image: Carrie Mae Weems. 2006. Palazzo Dei Congressi, Mussolini Rome
Copyright (c) 2026 Justin Fowler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“Nobody’s ever seen the High Line1”: Joel Sternfeld and the image of the High Line that led to its rehabilitation.
This article analyses the way in which a photographic work can participate in both the safeguarding and the transformation of an infrastructure whose heritage value was contested at the time. The article traces the importance of Joel Sternfeld’s photographs in the process of safeguarding the West Side Freight Line, which has since become the famous High Line Park, one of New York’s most visited landmarks. The article is based on an analysis of the genesis and course of the photographs (in order to analyse their dissemination strategies and reception) and on the discourses of various protagonists. In this example, the relationship between the photographer and his clients, as well as the way the photographs were exhibited and made visible, reflect a conscious desire to put the quality of a renowned photographer at the service of creating a positive collective imagination around a then little-known and littleappreciated infrastructure. While this approach did indeed help save the threatened building, it was also accompanied by a symbolic shift, in which images effectively replaced reality, directly influencing the High Line’s restoration projects and their reception by both the general public and the sponsors. 1 Joel Sternfeld, 2002. New York Voices: Joel Sternfeld,. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNzr7g8FQgk watched on 01.02.2023. Cover Image: Joel Sternfeld. 2000. Walking the High Line, Looking East on 30th Street on a Morning in May, courtesy of Joel Sternfeld
Copyright (c) 2025 Oscar Barnay https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Scaffolding Styles: Aesthetics of Iron Construction
The landscape that offers the city is unfinished and uncertain. It is full of temporary structures serving restorations, repairs, or new permanent and static works. The purpose of these construction elements is not their own aesthetic, theoretical, or functional value, but to evoke the value of something else — that which is to come. However, even though these elements are intended to be nothing more than a transient presence, they inevitably transform the city and its aesthetics. It is common to treat these elements with contempt and to devalue them because of their temporariness. This article aims to explore the aesthetic condition of temporary metal structures by examining the philosophical debate that took place during the nineteenth century on the use of steel in architecture. These discussions, together with photographs taken between the 1920s and 1930s of permanent industrial metal structures, were fundamental in establishing a new vision and aesthetic of industrial landscapes. Cover Image: Pont Transbordeur (1905) and Harbor of Marseilles. Archiv S. Giedion, Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, ETH - Honggerberg, Zurich.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sol Diéguez Garcia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The art duo Bernd and Hilla Becher, renowned for their focus on documenting obsolete industrial structures destined to disappear, gave birth to a work at the intersection of different genres, which contributed to revolutionizing the course of late 20th-century photography. In the present work, the inherent documentary value of their photographs will be highlighted, while also shedding light on a shifting perception of landscape appreciation, particularly related to the iconic exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, in which they participated as the only two Europeans among ten artists. Consideration will be given to how their work contributed to the development of industrial archaeology in the Ruhr, where their systematic documentation of vanishing industrial sites played a crucial role in redefining heritage preservation. The case of Zeche Zollern, an Art Nouveau industrial complex in Dortmund, will be examined as a concrete example of how their photographs influenced the recognition and conservation of industrial heritage. Finally, their work will be contextualized within contemporary environmental discourse, particularly in relation to the Anthropocene, emphasizing how their images raise critical questions about sustainability, the transformation of post-industrial landscapes, and the evolving relationship between industry and the environment. Cover Image: Bernd Becher, Eisernhardter Tiefbau Mine, Eisern, Germany, 1955/56, Graphite and watercolor on paper. © Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher.
Copyright (c) 2025 Giulia Incicco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Photographic Narratives of Modern Public Housing in Venezuela Across Two Moments
Unidad de Habitación Cerro Grande and Comunidad 2 de Diciembre, renamed Comunidad 23 de Enero after the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s military regime, are two public housing projects developed in Caracas, Venezuela, by the Taller de Arquitectura del Banco Obrero (TABO) during the 1950s. Both are part of the selection of Caracas buildings for the Interactive Atlas | Visual Register of Urban Architecture | Latin America 1940–1970, developed within the framework of two research projects on the relationship between photography and architecture in Latin America, directed by Professor Cristina Gastón Guirao at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia: “Recovery and Dissemination of Photographic Archives of Modern Architecture for the Development of an Operational Visual Heritage” and “Architecture, Photography and the City: Geolocation and Comparative Study of Photographic Records of Modern Architecture.” This paper focuses on a selection of photographs of both complexes corresponding to two different moments in their history: the first during and shortly after their construction, the second in the present day. Through images from both periods, the article examines the modern image of progress that the dictatorship attempted to project, alongside the architectural principles, design strategies, and values pursued by the architects. By comparing early images of both projects, Cerro Grande from the first years and 2 de Diciembre from the final stages of the workshop’s brief existence, it is possible to identify the concessions and reductions imposed on the architects due to budgetary constraints and, more significantly, the tight deadlines required to align with the regime’s propaganda program. Finally, the recent photographs offer insight into the deterioration and ongoing challenges these housing complexes face today, while also highlighting the enduring formal and spatial qualities of the original architecture and the everyday life it continues to sustain. Cover image: Guido Bermúdez, Unidad de Habitación Cerro Grande, Taller de Arquitectura TABO, Caracas. Photograph by Julio Mesa, 2023.
Copyright (c) 2025 María Fernanda Jaua https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Modularity and Prefabrication: Analysis of the Collective Housing at Ordrupvej No. 70 by Mogens Lassen and Engineer Ishøy
This study examines the evolution of functionalism in Denmark through the lens of the collective housing project at Ordrupvej No. 70 (1937), a landmark work by architect Mogens Lassen (1901–1987) and engineer Ernst Ishøy (1890–1959). The analysis situates the project within the broader context of Danish functionalism, contrasting the international influences of figures such as Le Corbusier (1887–1965) and Walter Gropius (1883–1969) with the local “functional tradition” articulated by architects like Kay Fisker (1893–1965), C.F. Møller (1898–1988), and Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971). A key focus of the inquiry is on the innovative construction techniques employed at Ordrupvej No. 70, particularly the use of a patented sliding formwork system known as Systemhuset. This system facilitated a rapid and cost-effective construction process and is critically analyzed in terms of its contribution to modularity and prefabrication in residential architecture. The central hypothesis is that Ordrupvej 70 represents not only a technical achievement but also a cultural negotiation between Danish tradition and international modernism, anticipating later debates on industrialized housing. The study is further enriched by historical photographs documenting the construction process. These images capture the intermediate stages of the building’s evolution, providing visual evidence of the methods and challenges associated with the implementation of the new construction system. This photographic documentation is integral to understanding the dynamic process of construction and the practical application of modular techniques in mid- 20th-century Danish architecture. Overall, the analysis highlights the contribution of Lassen and Ishøy’s collaboration as one of the earliest and most coherent experiments in integrating modular construction and prefabrication into collective housing, offering new perspectives for the historiography of modern architecture in Scandinavia. Cover image: House of the future
Copyright (c) 2025 Josep Oriol Ferrer Frau https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Aerial Photography as a New Perspective in Planning and Rehabilitation : Regional Conceptualizations along the Danube and around Lake Balaton in Socialist Hungary
Aerial photography has also influenced the modern interpretation of the landscape and the development of modern architectural concepts. An example of this is the aerial photo series documenting the developments of the Lake Balaton Region by Hungarian architects. The modernization of the largest lake in Central and Eastern Europe, has also achieved significant recognition in the international professional history. However, aerial photos soon played an important role in ecological restoration beyond planning. The Balaton resort project started in 1957 with a new scale and methodology of regional planning process. The project leader was Tibor Farkas, who continuously documented the transformation of the landscape by taking aerial photos from an airplane. These aerial photos provide the primary material for the research. The photos also show the interpretation of the landscape and the formation of architectural concepts. A year earlier, he had successfully prepared the regional plan for the Mohács Island recovery after floods on the Danube. In this process, he already experimented with the use of aerial photography as a design tool and used the experiences in the planning of the Balaton region. The innovative methodology of the Balaton regional plan, which he developed together with Charles Polónyi, later a member of TEAM 10, integrated the scales of architecture, urban planning and regional planning. The Balaton plan was successfully presented at international forums, including the regional planning congress in Liege in 1958 and the last CIAM forum in Otterlo in 1959. In 1965, the Patrick Abercrombie Prize of the UIA was dedicated to “Tibor Farkas and his team” for the integrated methodical treatment of landscape and architectural values. The Balaton regional plan brought a new scale of planning not only to architects and urban planners, but also to the garden designers who worked closely with them. Over time, the modernization of the landscape also brought ecological problems to the fore. In contrast to the visual landscape interpretation of architecture, a more complex landscape interpretation of ecology was needed, which also revalued the role of architecture. The development of Hungarian landscape architecture can also be linked to the Balaton project, when earlier garden designers began to develop landscape-scale concepts, which soon resulted in the institutionalization of landscape architecture and the launch of university education. Cover image: Aerial Photo, Zánka, 1972. Balaton Region. Source: Archive of Tibor Farkas
Copyright (c) 2025 Domonkos Wettstein https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Visual Practices, Architectural Memory and the Transformation of Public Space
This introductory text frames Sophia Journal’s tenth volume as the beginning of a new thematic cycle devoted to “landscapes of repair”. Building on the journal’s established concern with architecture, the city, photography, film and visual culture, it argues that visual practices should not be treated merely as tools of representation, but as critical methods of architectural research and knowledge production. Repair is presented as a complex cultural, political and ecological process, one that extends beyond technical restoration to include memory, heritage, social practices and future imaginaries. Within this framework, landscape is understood as a dynamic condition: material, cultural and imaginative at once, shaped by social, ecological, political and technological forces. The text places particular emphasis on modern and contemporary architecture, especially those recent architectural legacies that remain insufficiently recognised despite their influence on urban life. It proposes photography and film as means of revealing hidden values, contested meanings and processes of transformation that are often overlooked by conventional historiography. The volume’s contributions are organised around three sections: Modernity 50s–60s, Intermediate States and Other Realities. Together, these sections trace a critical movement from the documentation of modern architectural heritage, through transitional and provisional conditions, to marginal or alternative spaces that challenge dominant narratives. Across the issue, visual media are shown to activate architectural memory, question the status of archives, and expose the unstable relationship between design intention and lived reality. The editorial readings, theoretical papers, interviews and visual essays collectively demonstrate how images can register construction, decay, renewal, conflict and social appropriation. They also suggest that repair must be understood symbolically as well as materially, since the way architecture is seen, narrated and remembered influences how it may be transformed. Ultimately, the text advances a humanist approach to architectural and urban change, arguing that photography and film can help imagine more inclusive, resilient and sustainable futures.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pedro Neto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The right distance: Photographing the neighbourhoods built under the Carnation Revolution
In the preface to his book Why people photograph, Robert Adams mentions a recurring idea in his writings: “the effort we all make, photographers and nonphotographers, to affirm life without lying about it”. This was the challenge for visiting today the neighbourhoods built under SAAL, a housing program implemented during the Portuguese revolutionary period that sought to improve the housing conditions of the poorest classes based on a collective effort and the aspiration for a more equitable life for all. Photographing the neighbourhoods built under the Carnation Revolution required the openness to understand the life and the different fates that each neighbourhood has had, 50 years on since the 25th of April, in an effort to escape an outdated and nostalgic/melancholic gaze linked to the moment of its conception. Besides trying to understand the characteristics of the neighbourhoods in terms of its integrity, community life, conservation and ownership, this work also required a willingness to establish a link to affections, contributing to the multiplication of hypotheses in the construction of an imaginary, where ideas of time, restriction and freedom fit in. The construction of a dialogue is fundamental for promoting an encounter, a negotiated proximity between the photographer and the depicted objects, similar to what John Berger suggests about the act of painting. Perhaps this negotiation, or the search for the right distance, can be an approach to the affirmation of life. Cover image: Fonsecas-Calçada, Lisbon, SAAL neighbourhood, 2023.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Catarina Costa, Francisco Ascensão https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Differentiated inhabitation of ‘auteur architecture’: photographing Álvaro Siza’s Bouça housing estate
This paper explores the different ways residents of famous buildings experience the architecture they live in. We aim at an architectural photography that seeks to portray architecture not as a visual phenomenon but rather a lived one. We have photographed residents of the Bouça housing estate in Porto, Portugal, designed in the 1970s by Pritzker Prize winning Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza to house the urban poor after the 1974 revolution. The estate has since become an architectural icon and is currently undergoing gentrification by architects, designers and artists who are drawn to the appeal of ‘auteur architecture’. The differences in inhabitation between the original residents and the recent ones pertain to a complex yet dualistic stance between two distinct social classes on what architecture is and what it means, one that also raises the issue of housing for the urban poor becoming fashionable. We read such tensions while tracing back to Siza’s early belief in a classless society, which later evolved into the belief in an ‘interclassist city’. Cover image: Costa et al., “Inhabiting Auteur Architecture.”
Copyright (c) 2025 Marta Machado, Paulo Catrica, Ana Catarina Costa, Eduardo Ascensão https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Fenix architecture: Can a new and youth liveability for inner areas be based on the third and fourth-age community facilities?
The article takes its cue from the population ageing phenomenon in Italy, focusing on the country’s inner and marginal areas. These areas, which cover nearly 60% of the national territory, are facing significant challenges due to depopulation and the migration of young people to cities, leading to their marginalisation and reduced access to essential services. However, in recent decades, these regions have been reevaluated, viewing them not only as a problem but also as an opportunity for development and regeneration. The article explores how population ageing, traditionally seen as a challenge, can be transformed into a resource for the revitalization of inner areas. By analysing institutional policies such as the Strategia Nazionale per le Aree Interne (SNAI) and the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR), the text emphasises the importance of attracting new communities, including younger generations, to revitalize these territories. In fact, ageing can become a development factor, especially when combined with strategic planning and targeted architectural design projects, as illustrated by the case of Castel del Giudice, a small village in Molise that has managed to turn population ageing into an opportunity for economic and social growth. The case study of Castel del Giudice demonstrates how an innovative approach to managing welfare services, particularly for the elderly, can help to reverse the depopulation trend and create new job opportunities for young people. Through the establishment of an assisted living facility and other community initiatives, the village has not only improved the quality of life for the elderly but also generated economic activity that has attracted new families to the area. This example shows how inner areas can become laboratories for good practices and social innovation if adequately supported by targeted policies and investments. In conclusion, the article argues that population ageing in Italian inner areas should not be seen merely as a problem to be addressed, but as an opportunity to stimulate sustainable and inclusive development. Through targeted interventions that promote proximity welfare and community cohesion, it is possible to create new forms of liveability that can attract both young and old, contributing to the revival of territories currently considered fragile. Ageing, therefore, can become a catalyst for the revitalization of inner areas, transforming their fragility into a driving force for future development. Cover image: Castel del Giudice, the district of community welfare devices composed by exiting (RSA and assisted residences) and new PNRR facilities (senior social housing and socio-economic aggregation center) – elaboration of the author.
Copyright (c) 2025 Federica Serra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Right to the City (photo)voices: participatory photography with children in Greater Lisbon
The study “Voices of the Right to the City” consists of two participatory photography actions conducted in 2018 and 2021 by members of the Group of Socio-Territorial, Urban and Local Action Studies (GESTUAL). These actions involved children of African origin and Roma ethnicity from the self-produced neighbourhood Bairro da Torre in Greater Lisbon, who experienced a rehousing process that began in 2007 and concluded in 2023. Through a description and comparative analysis of the two actions and the data collected and by focusing on the neighbourhoods, housing and play spaces, we aim here to discuss the participants’ perceptions of changes in the places of their everyday lives before and after the rehousing process. Data collected includes the children’s own photographs, which have been obtained through photovoices, and interviews about these photographs, which were conducted through photoelicitation. We also seek to reflect on participatory photography as a research methodology. We argue that participatory photography can foster dialogue between researchers and research subjects, in our case children, offering an opportunity for the collective construction of knowledge. The results of this research highlight the urgent need to (re)think and (re)build cities in a way that ensures the voices of children and other vulnerable groups are heard and considered, thereby contributing to a just transformation of both the city and society.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rosa Arma, Camila Andrade dos Santos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Hybrid Landscapes in the Pearl River Delta: The case of Macau Modern Housing’s approach
The present paper contemplates the ground of research on emerging forms of inhabiting spaces in contemporary urban territories, with a precise focus on Macau’s 1960s housing production. In order to settle a comprehensive understanding about inaugural statements of architectural modernity, in the field of modern housing, built in Pearl River Delta’s region as a hybrid interpretation of Modern Movement’s ideas in colonial Asian territory, this proposal aims to analyse and present a set of residential buildings and projects that show adaptations of Modern approaches to different cultures, climate, and environment. The achievement of such goals is to be developed through a comparative analysis, based on archival research and a photographic survey, in order to derive, on one hand, an amplitude equation of adopted materialised theoretical matrix (forms, urban scales); and on the other hand, to identify variations between housing typologies’ solutions, collective spaces, spatial distributions and technical systems (façade, cross-ventilation). This classification needs to consider contextual factors, identify problematics and potentialities, and recognise architectural roles within Macau’s generational urban growth. Portuguese and local pioneers in Macau, such as Manuel Vicente, Raul Chorão Ramalho and José Maneiras, have demonstrated how the modern conception could be interpreted, understood, and enriched in terms of content. They were able to face and respond to diverse physical and social conditions, experimenting innovative solutions which remain currently interesting and valid. This paper aims to document and value public housing works of other seas that, due to a tide of redevelopment guided by high commercial profit which seems not to consider the past, have not been conserved or valorised, and today may disappear. The landscape of care under analysis is part of the architectural scenario endangered of fade over time; his interaction with public interest and memory deserves further consideration. Cover image: Leal Senado Housing Tower, 2023, Macau; © Niccolò Arnaldo Galliano
Copyright (c) 2025 Niccolò Arnaldo Galliano, Daniela Arnaut, Ana Tostões https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Errante1: contemporary devices for heuristic reflexions on housing, Malagueira, Marselha, and La Borda.
This reflexion makes visible the relationships between humans and the production of the built environment, proposing an exploration of the behavioural space between two collaborative narratives: the disciplinary, and the non-disciplinary. The aim is to examine the position of architects and their practices in addressing the socioenvironmental crisis facing the planet today. Questioning architecture predominantly through a disciplinary lens limits the integration of practices that fall outside dominant narratives. In pedagogical frameworks, it is crucial to venture beyond these boundaries and question how to learn from divergent practices that inherently function as educational tools. Non-disciplinarily (by wandering about how bodies are perceived in its social context), we understand how these devices work and unmistakably broaden the field of architecture from multimodal design practices. However, divergent methods alone are insufficient for professionals to effectively engage with communities in addressing contemporary issues (within the built environment) due to formal constraints. This inadequacy suggests the emergence of an ideo-cultural crisis alongside the socio-environmental one, underscoring the urgent need to resolve a persistent educational paradox regarding the relationship between disciplinary, and non-disciplinary approaches. Through the analysis of three cases (Unité, Malagueira, and La Borda), the article identifies approaches that operate both within, and outside dominant narratives, relating complex scenarios as catalysts for simpler, more inclusive, and sustainable heuristic decisions. Positioned as a proposal for a viable landscape of sustainable social progression, the article engages in heuristic reflections to interrogate how robust mechanisms of loss - reconfigured as constructive actions - inform project activities. These activities, in turn, are examined for their capacity to steer architectural praxis toward an empathetic framework for architect-education, derived from the ethos of the field and practice of architecture. Cover image: 2024 Behavioural space “as” a place. La Borda. Barcelona, Spain. author’s photograph 1 Errante (english (UK): wandering): author’s translation, selected from Caspar David Friedrich’s Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, 1818. A work set in the Romantic period; it depicts a man standing before a rocky gorge while observing a landscape characterised by a thick sea of fog. A relationship between the sublime and self-reflection, based on the evocation of the landscape and on the contemplation of the man situated within the realisation of his drift in the time of his life.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sérgio Miguel Magalhães https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Impact of care: Expanding Architectural education through Community Design-Build Projects
The influence of community-centered design and design-build projects on architectural education has increased in the last decade. Including student-led community-engaged projects in the curriculum of architecture schools has shaped architectural education and influenced the profession. These projects provide a service to communities or non-profit organisations in need of design solutions. Engaging social responsibility and public interest design represents an ideological shift in the way that architecture schools are approaching education. There is often an intersection of public interest design and design-build in these projects. This paper explores the question, can an academic community-based design-build project provide a new transitional housing prototype for the homeless? And, do these projects fulfil the needs of students to provide effective learning experiences for promoting their desire to promote communities they serve? Architecture schools provide learning experiences through various initiatives. For example, Yale University’s “The Yale Building Project,”1 Auburn University’s “Rural Studio”2 and University of Kansas “Studio 804”3 have had long-running public interest design studios. These designbuild initiatives educate students outside the typical design studio. This article will provide an overview of public interest and design-build education in the United States to provide context for introducing this into the curriculum at an Australian university. The Prefab 21 design-build studio is a partnership between the Deakin University School of Architecture and Built Environment, FormFlow, and Samaritan House, a shelter for homeless men, that focuses on the design and fabrication of a prototype house. This transdisciplinary project was accomplished in design studio and workshop sessions that designed, documented, and built an Independent Living Unit (ILU) and created a microvillage of seven ILUs at Samaritan House. This prototype has an extensive impact through it providing a new typology for transitional homeless accommodation and jobs in the region. Cover image: Samaritan House Microvillage Aerial View
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Territory as Threshold: Images of Thought for a Non-Modern Landscape
French philosopher Bruno Latour (1947-2022) proposed an idea in his 1991 book “We Have Never Been Modern” that challenges the age-old notion of a clear distinction between Nature and culture or Man and object. According to Latour, the traditional attempts to separate the concept from its counterpart have failed. Instead, he argues that these concepts are interconnected and cannot be treated as separate entities. This principle can be applied to contemporary urban areas and the surrounding region, where the borders between the city and Nature are becoming increasingly blurred. Design plays a crucial role in conscious thinking and addressing the challenges of using natural resources, their impact on sustainability, and how we interconnect with sites and the Land. Furthermore, the relationship between urban areas and Nature is a critical issue that demands attention. These challenges are crucial for considering cities and landscapes and addressing them through design in terms of the territory. This act of design should tend towards a more holistic and integrated vision, which aligns with contemporary trends in various areas through a shift towards city projects that are less and less disruptive to the world. The conventional view of cities and Nature as separate entities is shifting towards an integrated perspective. This text deals with the territory as an agent of syntropy, as a link between the landscape and the city. The goal is to uncover how the relationship between the body and the territory can generate synergy in the system and create symbiotic relationships between the various parts involved. To achieve this, we will examine the available literature, starting from the central idea that we have never been modern. With this objective in mind, we will highlight the common areas to revisit the concept of assemblage. As a point of comparison, it is vital to closely examine Frank Lloyd Wright’s almost century-old text, The Disappearing City from 1932, and determine which aspects of his utopian vision remain relevant today. Regarding that text, Kenneth Frampton (b. 1930) highlights gradually erasing the distinction between the countryside and the city, like the ideology of the Communist Manifesto of 1872. Cover image: Nature - Culture, 2008, 38.836855, -7.578370, Author
Copyright (c) 2025 Luís Miguel Ginja https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
An editorial project as a catalyst for discussion and construction of architectural ideas: scopio Editions and Sophia Journal
The Sophia Journal editorial project, initiated at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) and its R&D Centre for Architecture and Urbanism Studies (CEAU), is a pivotal platform for discussing and constructing architectural ideas through photography, film, and other visual media. This initiative fosters international engagement, bridging academia with various professional and creative communities interested in architecture, photography, and urban studies. At the core of Sophia Journal’s mission is integrating contemporary visual culture with architectural discourse, significantly influencing scholarly and public debates. This focus is reflected in a range of high-impact publications, including peer-reviewed issues, special thematic volumes, and the organization of international conferences. Since its founding in 2016, Sophia Journal has provided a rigorous academic space for critical inquiry into the intersection of architecture, urban transformation, and visual narratives. The journal’s international conferences, initiated in 2010 with On the Surface, have played a crucial role in fostering dialogue on architecture and visual culture. These events have helped establish a global research network, positioning Sophia Journal as a key reference for exploring the role of photography and film in architectural and urban studies. (...)
Catalyst for Discussion and Construction of Architectural Ideas
Public housing across multiple geographies: crossing theories and practices
Copyright (c) 2024 Pedro Leão Neto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“The commodification of housing and urban land has turned what should be a basic human right into an instrument of speculative profit-making, systematically excluding the poor and reinforcing class divides within cities.” 1 What remains when housing is no longer considered a need or a right but a commodity? This question frames the urgency of rethinking how we conceive and produce space today. The idea that the home is a private, apolitical realm has long been dismantled by scholars such as Christopher Reed, who, in ‘Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture‘, frames domesticity as a contested cultural and political field.2 From this perspective, the contemporary housing crisis is not merely a failure of supply and demand mechanisms, but the manifestation of deep structural inequalities, demanding a fundamental redefinition of what it means to inhabit collectively. This panel examines how cooperative practices and participatory models challenge dominant paradigms by proposing new forms of collective living that emphasize agency, mutual support, and care as central to spatial production. John Turner’s influential argument in Housing by People — that when inhabitants control key decisions, housing becomes a source of individual and social well-being — remains highly relevant.3 Already in Freedom to Build (1972), Turner had introduced the idea of “housing as a verb,” stressing that housing should be understood not as a finished object, but as an active, ongoing process shaped by its users.4 Contemporary cooperative models adopt this perspective, framing housing as a living, adaptive system rather than a static commodity. (...)
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Revitalizing housing: the vital trajectories of cooperative systems
In a present time of crisis. Disruptive, turbulent and problematic (Haraway 2022), cooperative housing have re-emerged as a resilient network. These dynamic systems came to challenge prevailing narratives about housing and city production, offering alternatives through an innovative social technology. These cooperative systems become authentic collaborative and supportive cells of habitat generation, thus forming a complex assemblage of multiple entities. This essay invites to think about the vital and cyclical nature of housing cooperatives, by observing the phenomenon as an open system capable of establishing complex relationships that transcend the built object, towards giving value to the role of self-management and self construction played by the community. The Mutual Aid Housing Cooperatives developed in Uruguay since 1968 is an example of comprehensive and sustainable solutions to the country’s housing needs. Supported by the National Housing Law of 1968, these cooperatives have established an alternative system that integrates environmental relationships and strengthens cross-sector collaboration between the community and the State. The concept of vitality in cooperativism, which this essay addresses, aligns with the organic and biological approaches to perception and world-building proposed by authors such as John Turner, Donella Meadows and Donna Haraway. The present article consolidates the importance of collective ownership in these cooperatives as both a mechanism of safeguard against real estate speculation and a symbol of popular resistance. Furthermore, it underlines the relevance of community practices and active participation in the construction and management of housing as essential pillars for sustaining the vitality construction of the system. Own Author. 2023. UFAMA Cooperative under construction. Cooperatives of Afro-descendant women heads of households
Copyright (c) 2025 Luisa Frigolett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Spatial interventions in vulnerable territories: the “Bairros Saudáveis” case
The “Bairros Saudáveis” (Healthy Neighborhoods) programme in Portugal emerged in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Its aim was to improve health conditions and quality of life in vulnerable territories through small, bottom-up interventions. A key condition for these interventions was the formation of partnerships between associations, NGOs, residents, and public entities. This article examines the relationships between the quality of spaces in vulnerable territories and participatory and/or bottom-up public policies, using “Bairros Saudáveis” (BS) as a case study. The research involves a selection of projects developed within the BS programme, combining information obtained from interviews with individuals and entities involved in these projects and analysing official project documents. The objectives of the study are to contextualize and understand the BS programme within the social and public health crises it coincided with; examine how the themes of “space” and “architecture” were addressed by the programme and its proposed projects; verify the programme’s adherence to participatory principles; and identify good practices for future similar actions or new editions of the programme. Additionally, this study aims to contribute to a broader reflection on the state of participatory practices in architecture within the Portuguese context. It seeks to understand whether these practices are helping to mitigate socio-economic-cultural problems and improve the quality of life in marginalized contexts. Methodologically, the paper explores the official communication channels of the BS programme; key primary and secondary sources related to the theme; interviews with actors involved in the selected case studies, as well as privileged observers; and in situ participatory observation. We acknowledge the challenge of identifying concrete outcomes from an unfinished public policy, as some projects remain incomplete. Therefore, we present this as a work in progress, aimed at promoting relevant and necessary debate both within and outside the academic sphere. In conclusion, this study highlights numerous deficiencies in many Portuguese housing contexts, whether geographically peripheral or socially excluded in urban centres. The pandemic exacerbated social and territorial inequality in Portugal, leading to problems that directly impact the quality of life for marginalised populations. The cases analysed also underscore the potential of architecture and spatial interventions as strategies for social transformation. Cover image: Balneários Comunitários. Photo: Os Pioneiros, 2022. Courtesy of Os Pioneiros.
Copyright (c) 2025 Leonardo Ramires, Rita Ochoa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Walking the Table: Caring-with landscape
Walking the Table is an experimental project that develops a relationship of care, registering and becoming conscious of subtle changes within an Australian landscape. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s ideas of ‘making-with’1 and Tim Ingold’s concept of ‘thinking through making’2 this visual essay explores ideas of relational care within a rapidly altering landscape and how one may become an attentive participant, moving with a changing landscape as a practice of care. Understanding ‘landscape’ to be a layered entanglement of systems, materials and inhabitants (more-than-human and human) movements and projections that are influenced by the past and present, the role of the photographs and two forms of text is to weave three different layers of conversation that are relational and form an overall narrative. Photography is used to capture the process of a dialogue emerging between the walker and the landscape, facilitated through the camera and the table when walking the table around the site. Landscape and care is an ever-evolving relationship that requires attentiveness and participation. When a relationship with a landscape is built over a prolonged period of time, revealed are the drastic differences in scales of temporal shifts that landscapes undergo, formulating an ongoing dialogue between the landscape and the inhabitant of that landscape. Cover image: Shadow 11, Noticing an unusual shadow of a tree branch I looked up. What we humans botanically classify as an Ulmus species had a strange growth on its smaller branches. Unknown to me whether the tree has wing-bark disease or is a cork-winged Elm, after this discovery and unsure whether the Elm was sick or not, each time I passed by, I would check on the tree.
Copyright (c) 2023 Millicent Gunner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Dams in the Swiss Alps are at once engineering marvels, dramatic man-made artefacts, crucial nodes in far-reaching infrastructural systems, and destructive interventions in alpine ecosystems. The essay explores the contradictory nature of dams in the Swiss Alps through the author’s photographs and the experience of the infrastructural sublime. By focusing on the coming together of rockface and cast concrete shell within the images, the dams appear as distinct naturecultures interwoven with the flows and forces of the alpine landscape. Using the sublime as a lens to describe the aesthetic experience, the essay proposes the possibility of gaining environmental consciousness and humility of the vast impact of dams, through the encounter of the infrastructural sublime. Cover image: Lars Rolfsted Mortensen, Dixence I from the series “Infra/Super/Structure”, 2017, 128 x 160cm inkjet print
Copyright (c) 2023 Lars Rolfsted Mortensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Food production is the largest cause of global environmental change. The debate on sustainable agriculture focuses largely on the implementation of new agricultural techniques. The impact of these techniques on agricultural landscapes is not often considered. With the film ‘Tussen de kassen’, I attempt to shift the current debate in a direction that allows consideration of the aesthetic and systemic consequences of the implementation of agricultural techniques on specific landscapes. ‘Tussen de kassen’ examines an innovative and sustainable landscape of greenhouse horticulture. More than a tool to communicate research or annotate site visits, film and filmmaking functioned as architectural carpentry. Meaning that the complete process of filmmaking (including preliminary site visits, editing, etc.) functioned as an unconventional method of knowledge production for an architectural research project. Using ‘Tussen de Kassen’, I illustrate three ways in which filmmaking as architectural carpentry benefits the work of landscape architects whilst examining modern landscapes of food production; As a tool to explore and examine the atmospheres of agricultural landscapes (1) Film is able to convey synaesthetic properties of a landscape. These are properties that belong to multiple sensory fields at once and play a part in generating ‘atmosphere’, the meaning a person assigns unconsciously and almost instantaneously to a space. Film allows viewers to explore the synaesthetic properties behind this initial atmosphere and (re-) examine their subconsciously assigned meanings to space. As a method to explore unexpected entanglements in food production landscapes (2) The (architectural) medium used to analyse a site determines the understanding of that site. Filmmaking demands close engagement with a site, making the filmmaker a participant of the landscape. This results in unexpected discoveries of entanglements between agricultural techniques and other site aspects. As a form of eidetic storytelling for landscapes of the Anthropocene (3) Narrating the functioning and conception of Anthropocenic landscapes in a causal, linear manner is problematic as it leads to ‘undecidability’ and inaction. Film, as an eidetic storytelling tool, combines different types of information (i.e. visual, acoustic, quantifiable, metaphoric, etc.) to mediate multivalent, openended and non-linear narratives for Anthropocenic landscapes. Cover image: Stills from ‘Tussen de Kassen’
Copyright (c) 2023 Corné Strootman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The essay investigates the Milanese street-front gardens of post-WWII middle-class housing. Spread around the city by hectic developers, these gardens reflect specific cultural- al, political and social conditions of Italy’s industrial capital during the economic miracle. Street-facing gardens are an essential feature of modern middle-class condominiums. They reflected the modernist urban vision of a park-city and the Milanese tradition of the street facade; they encapsulate the bourgeois culture with its urge for representative decorum and the freedom of architectural experimentation; their image was used as a marketing tool in real estate advertisement but also as an argument in negotiation for the building licence. In Post-WWII Milan urban nature radically changed its connotation: from a hygienic device, it transformed into a status symbol, and the Milanese started to take care of gardens precisely because of their decorative importance. Even though they are private, they are designed to be looked at from the street, and therefore they make an important part of the everyday urban experience. Beyond their speculative nature, the gardens of Milanese condominiums transformed the urban landscape, bringing density together with well-cared nature into the city streets. The essay explores this phenomenon through a series of distant and close-up views as if following a wandering gaze through the streets of the city. Cover image: Condominium in Piazzale Bacone, arch. Gustavo and Vito Latis, 1968
Copyright (c) 2023 Natalia Voroshilova, Giulio Galasso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
White buildings, Red Dust: Brasilia in Ektachrome Colour
Brasília’s red dust is everywhere. Regularly tinting the white surfaces of Brasília’s modernist buildings red, a great effort of human labor is required every day to maintain their intended autonomy. Dust clouds first appeared in February 1957 due to massive earthworks and the clearing of the original landscape. While large tractors and caterpillars aggressively manipulated the ground following the forms of Lucio Costa’s Pilot Plan, a formless entropic dispersal of red soil microparticles filled the air. As the floating dust spread over Brasília’s construction site, it also filled the printed pages of newspapers and magazines. This article intends to discuss how dust tainted the representation of Brasília. As modernist architecture confronted the landscape, dust introduced a distortion in the pure image of Brasília, threatening not only the whiteness of the upcoming architectures but also contaminating drawings, cameras, lenses, printed photographs, clothes and lungs. While most of the architectural black and white photos of Brasília tended to produce clean images, the introduction of the newest color film Ektachrome by photojournalists made earthworks and dust visible. Associated with grainy reproduction in illustrated magazines and speckles of dust in the negatives themselves, the images enhanced the perception of Brasília’s total environmental design. If dust is, according to Richard Meyer, “an environment in miniature, a physical archive of our material surroundings,” this article analyzes how these fine particles of solid matter and their accidental reproduction, operated as visual dissonances that confuse the modern distinction between nature and culture. Cover image: Mário Fontenelle, Clearing, c.a. 1958, Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal
Copyright (c) 2023 Ciro Miguel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Unclaiming the natural waterfront landscape: Thessaloniki’s manmade east waterfront
This article focuses on the transition of the natural landscape of Thessaloniki’s east waterfront to the artificial urban landscape that draws a straight line between water and land, while noting the developing rigid homogeneous multistorey buildings as a background image of the city in contrast to the former porosity and architectural variety of the late 19th-early 20th century mansions. The transition is captured either as a commentary on the new landscape or as a memoir of a lost era by cinematographers, such as Takis Kanellopoulos in his film “Parenthesis” (1968) and Theo Angelopoulos in his film “Eternity and a Day” (1998) and photographers of the 1960’s such as Socratis Iordanidis and Yiannis Stylianou. Cover image: Theo Angelopoulos, Populated manmade waterfront, Film still, Eternity and a Day, Thessaloniki, 1998
Copyright (c) 2023 Sotiria Alexiadou, Vassilis Colonas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This paper concerns the cinematic representation of São Paulo’s Elevado João Goulart, a 3.5km elevated expressway close to the historic centre of the city, popularly known as the Minhocão. Built during the boom period of Brazil’s dictatorship, the Minhocão opened to traffic in January 1971. Controversial at the beginning of its existence, it has been partially rehabilitated, a process in which film has been important. The paper describes three general modes of the Minhocão’s depiction on film: in the first it represents a generalised fear of the modern city, in the second it is a normal part of the landscape, and in the third it is a form of aesthetic occupation. Key films discussed include Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), directed by Hector Babenco (1985) and the documentary Elevado 3.5 (Maíra Bühler, Paulo Pastorelo and João Sodré 2006). The paper responds to Sophia’s Landscapes of Care theme by showing how over time film can, over time, help rehabilitate seemingly irredeemable infrastructure.
Copyright (c) 2023 Richard Williams https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Ways of seeing architecture and landscape in the voids of presence
The article examines the multi-layered roles of photography and film in “cultural translation,” representing architecture and landscape as a mediated place of conflicting visions, meanings and experiences. Taking the concept of the “production of space” as a starting point, it aims to contextualise the mediatory practices of photography and film by means of analysing the case study of a multifunctional building – the Krvavica Children’s Health Resort – designed in the 1960s by Rikard Marasović on the Adriatic coast of Croatia (formerly Yugoslavia). Focusing on an analysis of three paradigmatic examples of visual practices, the photographic series by Wolfgang Thaler (2011), the episode Mysterious Object in the Pine Forest filmed as part of the documentary series Slumbering Concrete (2016), and the experimental film A Record of Landscape without Prehistory by the artistic duo Doplgenger (2020), the article explores how photography and film communicate quality, in particular how mediated representations (re)create current interpretation and understanding of the intertwined heritage of modern architecture and landscape. Examining aspects of recording the site from different perspectives, a series of questions arise when addressing the issue of space, focused on its role in reshaping meanings, memories, emotions and experiences, narrating not only what architecture and landscape are but also what they could become and how they might be constituted in the context of different cultural identities.
Copyright (c) 2023 Jasna Galjer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
There is a big gap between the abstraction of an idea and its concrete implementation. This gap is filled with processes that imply the taking of actions to help achieve a tangible result, and there is a myriad of ways these actions can follow through. Photographic and filmic methodologies shape work through the processes of doing informed by gestures in the photographic and filmic operations on site and in the later editing phase1 by which an understanding is changed into a story, an idea in a final visual and/or sequential form. The need for good ideas due to the growing challenges presented by climate changes, imposes serious thinking around actual ways of doing relevant contributions to help ‘heal a broken world’. Photographic and filmic work processes can support that purpose embedding specific site experience methodologies open to the passage of time and the changes it encompasses associated with the landscape we have inherited. Exploring a place or a landscape and working with what is found through movement: walking, driving, flying, the editing of footage, the study of photographs, films, or selected material, reveal changes to specific landscapes and possible readings, interpretations, and understandings of those changes. Such actions and processes have a long tradition in artistic practices transecting land art, landscape architecture and environmental studies.2 (...)
Copyright (c) 2023 João Leal, Rikke Munck Petersen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0