To Reinforce - 2025 by Lars Hovland

Key Dates

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.

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

ORGANISATION

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+

COORDINATION

Pedro Leão Neto — FAUP

GUEST EDITORS

Cristina Gastón — ETSAB–UPC

Hugh Campbell — University College Dublin

EDITORS

Ana Miriam Rebelo — FAUP

Maria Neto — FAUP

Raquel Paulino — FAUP

PARALLEL PROGRAMME

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.

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.

The Call is now closed – 

In this call for papers and visual essays of Sophia Journal Vol.10 No. 1 “Landscapes of Repair: The Role of Photography and Film in Documenting the Legacy of Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Public Spaces”, – we invite theoretical and field work using photographic and visual practices to explore and document both Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Public Space infrastructure. The call aims to understand and document architecture, building, city and territory as living and inclusive organisms, focused on recent past and present positive experiences that have shaped the quality of urban space, as well as on heritage resources for global sustainability.

On the 22nd of November 2024, at the Universidad de Navarra, E.T.S.A., another edition of our Sophia Journal International conference will take place, continuing the successful annual cycle of international forums dedicated to the critical exploration of the intersections between image and architecture.

Sophia Journal is no longer accepting submissions for its 1st Manuscript concerning its third thematic cycle, “Landscapes of Care,” addressing research, projects, experiences, and contemporary photographic and visual practices that focus on how architecture, understood in a broad sense, can help to heal the relationships between man and habitat, as well as the socio-environmental crisis that the planet is experiencing.

Editors: Maria Neto (UBI-FAUP), Paz Nuñez Martí (UAH-ETSAM)
Guest Editors: Igea Troiani (LSBU), Joan Mac Donald (U. Chile), Jorge Tárrago Mingo (ETSAUN)

Open Call Video Presentation

LANDSCAPES OF CARE: PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM, MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE HERITAGE

Organised by: Hugh Campbell, Igea Troiani, João Leal, Mark Durden, Olívia Marques da Silva, Pedro Leão Neto, Rikke Munck Petersen, Teresa Ferreira

The 8th Sophia Journal International Conference will present a live and videoconference program organised by CEAU / FAUP and the event will be broadcasted live online, encompassing a rich and diverse program around: (i) roundtables for each panel concerning a focused topic coming from Sophia´s comprehensive call; (ii) presentation of articles and visual essays submitted; (iii) Photography exhibition: The Idea of Álvaro Siza.

DATE
15th and 16th of September 2023

PLACE
The Conference will be held in person at FAUP (Auditorium Fernando Távora) on the 15th and 16th of September and online.

+ info

8th SOPHIA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE WEBSITE
Research group 'Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem — AAI'  CEAU.FAUP

SCOPIO Network

FAUP SIGARRA

Sophia Journal Vol. 8 | Abstract deadline (Conference): 1 December 2022 | Landscapes of care: photography, film, modern architecture and landscape heritage.

Editors: Hugh Campbell, Mark Durden, Teresa Ferreira, João Leal, Rikke Munck Petersen and Igea Troiani

 

LANDSCAPES OF CARE: THE EMERGENCE OF LANDSCAPES OF CARE IN UNSTABLE TERRITORIES
The current 7th Sophia International Conference, organised by CEAU / FAUP, is the direct result of the Call for Papers of the upcoming 7th issue of Sophia Journal and the first volume within a new cycle of the Sophia Journal dedicated to Landscapes of Care. After a selection of the best papers and visual essays submitted to our Call, the results will be presented during an Online Conference, on the 29th of September, organised in two panels, discussing landscapes of extraction, wastelands, desert landscapes as heritage, geological boundaries and political borders, arctic expeditions, among other stimulating issues central to discuss what we have proposed in our Call. The Online Conference also counts with three presentations by invited keynote speakers: Armin Linke, Marco Ferrari + Elisa Pasqual (Studio Folder), and Elsa Brès. Each presentation is followed by a generous time for discussion between all the participants to fulfil what has been one of the major objectives of these Conferences.

To celebrate the rich and diverse program of the current issue of this year's Sophia International Conference, the organization committee proposes a live screening of films during the afternoon of the 28th of September, followed by a round-table with Margarida Mendes (TBC), Jorge Leandro Rosa, and Pedro Bandeira.

Sophia Journal Vol. 7

Landscapes of Care: the emergence of landscapes of care in unstable territories | Editors: Susana Ventura and Andreia Alves de Oliveira | Guest Editor: Armin Linke.

FAUP Announces the Release of Volume 6 of Sophia Journal, Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations.

The launch of Vol. 6 will be announced soon.

© Luis Ferreira Alves | Arquivo Casa da Arquitectura

The second edition of the Luis Ferreira Alves International Photography Competition invites photographers worldwide to develop distinctive visual narratives around architecture, continuing a dialogue with many of the questions explored through Sophia Journal’s calls, publications and international conferences.

Submission deadline: 1 January 2027

The Luis Ferreira Alves International Photography Competition | A Contemporary Look at Architecture — LFA AWARD is now open for its second edition, 2026–27.

PICTER - Submission platform

Sophia Journal is pleased to share this international Open Call with its community, as the LFA AWARD develops within a field of enquiry closely connected to the journal’s own work: the relationships between photography, architecture, city and territory, and the capacity of visual practices not simply to represent architecture, but to interpret it, question it and generate new ways of seeing and understanding the built environment.