Architecture, Structures and Construction - Call for Papers - Structures and Architecture - REconsidering the Practice of Building

Guest Editors:
Prof. Ornella Iuorio, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Prof. Mario Rinke, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Prof. Marie Frier Hvejsel, Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission deadline: 1 October 2024

Description
This Special Issue will map cutting-edge research projects, methods, and collaborative practices as a REconsideration - of how we design and build in the crossfield of more circular structures and architecture. The contributions will provide a unique ‘double’ map: discussing structures and architecture as physical results and interdisciplinary collaborative processes through which these structures and architecture emerge. In summary, the issue will:

•  Intersect and bridge environmental, social and economic dimensions of these challenges as they manifest in the physical joinery of structures and architecture in the shaping of the build environment.
• Identify collaborative potentials and responsibilities of structures and architecture across disciplines, perspectives and geographies in this matter.

Submission guidelines
All papers must be prepared in accordance with the Instructions for Authors at:
https://www.springer.com/journal/44150/submission-guidelines (this opens in a new tab).  Authors should submit via the online submission site (this opens in a new tab) and select article type "Structures and Architecture - REconsidering the Practice of Building".

Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the Special Issue. All papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation by at least two reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process.

Please note that the authors of selected papers presented at ICSA2025 are invited to submit an extended version of their contributions by taking into consideration both the reviewers’ comments on their conference paper, and the feedback received during presentation at the conference. It is worth clarifying that the extended version is expected to contain a substantial scientific contribution, e.g., in the form of new algorithms, experiments or qualitative/quantitative comparisons, and that neither verbatim transfer of large parts of the conference paper nor reproduction of already published figures will be tolerated. The extended versions of ICSA2025 papers will undergo the standard, rigorous journal review process and be accepted only if well-suited to the topic of this special issue and meeting the scientific level of the journal. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editors-in-Chief.

Meet the Guest Editors:
Ornella Iuorio is an Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds, UK.  She is an international expert in the field of cold-formed steel systems, prefab, retrofit, and circular economy. She has been recognized by the Guardian in 2022 as one the “Top 50 Women in Engineering: Invertors & Innovators” for developing innovative lightweight and resilient construction systems with high structural performance and low embodied carbon, widely adopted in mass-manufacturing and in seismic areas. With a portfolio of research projects over £6M funded by Innovate UK, EPSRC, ESRC, and British Academy, Prof. Iuorio is contributing to the transformation of the construction sector by developing prefabrication, optimization and digital fabrication to deliver more sustainable new constructions and retrofitting the built environment.

Mario Rinke is a Professor at the Faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp. Trained as a structural engineer and having worked in the field of architecture for some years, he conducts research and teaches on structures and construction in architecture. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Bauhaus University Weimar and a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich, and has worked as a design engineer for major offices in London and Zurich. Prof. Rinke has taught at the architecture department at ETH Zurich, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the International Association of Structures and Architecture (IASA).

Marie Frier Hvejsel is a Professor of Architectural Technology at Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark, where she coordinates the research lab ‘Technology, Building Culture and Habitation’. She is president of the International Association for Structures and Architecture and co-chair of the 5th and 6th International Conferences on Structures and Architecture, ICSA2022 and ICSA2025. She holds a Master of Science in Architecture and a Ph.D. in architecture from the Department of Architecture, Design & Media Technology at Aalborg University. Her work focuses on the formulation of transdisciplinary research methods, formats and didactics for juxtaposing the development and expansion of the social capacity of architecture as spatial ‘gesture’ with the development of viable technical ‘principles’ of construction.