OPEN CALL: SOPHIA JOURNAL 12 | LANDSCAPES OF REPAIR | LEARNING REPAIR - SITUATED PEDAGOGIES, CIVIC LANDSCAPES AND VISUAL PRACTICES

To Reinforce - 2025 by Lars Hovland

Abstract submission deadline: 1 January 2027

Notification of selected authors: 28 February 2027

Full paper and visual essay submission deadline: 1 May 2027

Notification following peer review: 20 July 2027

Submission of revised manuscripts: 1 September 2027

Sophia Journal International Conference: 24–25 July 2027 (dates to be confirmed)

Final manuscript deadline: 20 November 2027

Publication: December 2027 (to be confirmed)

Framework

Within its Fourth thematic cycle, Landscapes of Repair, Sophia Journal has explored the role of photography, film, architecture and other visual practices in confronting the social, spatial and ecological fractures shaping contemporary cities and territories.

Sophia Journal 11, The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair, revisited the critical legacy of the Manplan series and its commitment to making visible the distance between architectural intentions and lived realities. It asked how visual practices might expose the inequalities, environmental pressures, infrastructural failures and less visible forms of exhaustion that weigh upon contemporary urban life.

Sophia Journal 12, Learning Repair: Situated Pedagogies, Civic Landscapes and Visual Practices, develops the next stage of this enquiry. It shifts attention from the exposure of fractures to the processes through which repair may be learned, practised, negotiated and shared.

Repair is frequently understood as a technical response to material deterioration: the restoration of a building, the rehabilitation of public space or the correction of infrastructural failure. This issue proposes a more expansive understanding. Repair may also be social, ecological, cultural, institutional and pedagogical. It involves learning how to observe existing conditions, attend to neglected relationships, work with inherited structures and recognise the knowledge embedded in everyday practices of use, maintenance and care.

Learning repair means developing the capacity to act without first erasing what already exists. It requires attention to historical layers, material transformations, collective memories, environmental processes and forms of occupation that cannot be reduced to a single architectural narrative. It also requires critical reflection on who defines what is damaged, who is authorised to repair it, whose knowledge is acknowledged, and who benefits from the resulting transformations.

Sophia Journal Announces the Programme for the 11th International Conference — Landscapes of Repair: The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair

The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair
Portuguese Architects’ Association — Northern Regional Section (OASRN) | 25–26 September 2026 

PT/ENG

CONFERENCE LIVE STREAMING YOUTUBE . FAUP
https://www.youtube.com/live/Zvsnrhaf4cg?si=fjc65NuZ1nU72eN7

Portuguese Architects’ Association — Northern Regional Section (OASRN)

Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (FAUP) | CENP — Nuno Portas Centre for Architectural Studies

Culture Centre, Technical University of Porto — UTP / FMAD / ID+

Pedro Leão Neto — FAUP

Cristina Gastón — ETSAB–UPC

Hugh Campbell — University College Dublin

Ana Miriam Rebelo — FAUP

Maria Neto — FAUP

Raquel Paulino — FAUP

Olívia Marques da Silva — Culture Centre, Technical University of Porto — UTP / FMAD / ID+

Jorge Sobrado — Councillor for Culture and Heritage, Porto City Council

The 11th Sophia Journal International Conference — Landscapes of Repair: The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair will take place in Porto on 25 and 26 September 2026, with an in-person programme and online streaming.

On 25 September, the scientific programme will be held at the Portuguese Architects’ Association — Northern Regional Section (OASRN). On 26 September, the parallel programme will take place at the Culture Centre, Technical University of Porto — UTP, followed in the afternoon by a visit to Quinta da Conceição, in Matosinhos.

Across the two days, the conference will bring together researchers, architects, photographers, artists, editors and other professionals to explore the relationships between architecture, image, the city and contemporary forms of repair.

Part of the fourth thematic cycle of Sophia Journal, the conference proposes a broad understanding of repair. Rather than being understood solely as a technical intervention on buildings, infrastructures or landscapes, repair is approached as an ethical, social, cultural, ecological and imaginative practice, capable of recognising vulnerabilities, bringing often overlooked conditions into view, and renewing relationships between people, places and institutions.

The conference takes as its starting point the critical legacy of Manplan, the series published by The Architectural Review between 1969 and 1970. By confronting the promises of architecture and planning with the realities of everyday life, Manplan shifted the focus of architectural representation away from the isolated building and towards human experience and the social, political and economic systems that shape the conditions of inhabitation.

More than fifty years later, this perspective remains particularly relevant in the face of urban inequalities, housing precarity, deteriorating infrastructures, environmental pressures, the invisibility of maintenance work and other, sometimes less apparent, forms of collective wear and exhaustion.

OPEN CALL IS NOW CLOSED | THANK YOU FOR YOUR APPLICATIONS​​: Sophia Journal Vol. 11 Landscapes of Repair - The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair

In this call for papers and visual essays for Sophia Journal Vol. 11 No. 1, we invite submissions that revisit, expand, or challenge the critical spirit of Manplan by exploring how visual and spatial practices - particularly through the lenses of photography, film, and architecture - can act as instruments of care, exposure, and repair. Contributions may examine unstable territories, critically revisit urban archives, or propose actions that seek to repair the imperceptible scars of contemporary cities and landscapes.