Journal Astragalo announces two new calls for papers: A39 (EXTRA) (2025) DOUBLE COLLAPSE: ECOSYSTEMIC AND HUMANISTIC and A40 (2025) DRAWING THE FRONTIERS | EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN ARCHITECTURAL AND PRACTICAL TRAINING.

A39 (EXTRA) (2025) DOUBLE COLLAPSE: ECOSYSTEMIC AND HUMANIST.

Guest Editors:

Manoel Rodrigues Alves, Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil

Julio Arroyo, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina

submissions until May 30^th 2025 peer review until July 30^th 2025  publication October 2025

For the contemporaries of the first 25 years of the 21st century, contemporaneity, understood as a historical condition and cultural pattern, reformulates problems and introduces new subjects of study, conditioning the revision of apparently consolidated procedures and theoretical frameworks. The awareness of living in new eras, such as those of the anthropocene and the digital, opens up hypotheses of transition towards a post-human world in which the city and the territory, public space and social practices, architecture and the aesthetics of everyday life are confronted as the end of a historical cycle, giving rise to a different state. José Luis Pardo (2011) argues that due to the civilisational change we are undergoing; we are in a permanent transition of paradigms: is this the case in the Global South?

The direction taken by the development of technology since modernity affects different disciplinary fields, such as Architecture and Urbanism, which have become a kind of absolute knowledge about the ways of inhabiting the Earth, considered as an available resource to be instrumentalised with the consequent disappearance of biomes and the degradation of landscapes. Urban territories, cities, have been transformed into devices with a high environmental impact. To be a contemporary of these changes means paying attention to concepts such as the Anthropocene, Capitalocene or Chthulucene which, due to their breadth, express the multi-causality of the processes that affect the planet as a whole, opening up the possibility of developing a new ethic in the relationship between humanity and nature.

Likewise, the entrenchment of the digital era promotes informational logic in all orders of existence, facilitates compulsive connectivity between monadic individuals (Sadin, 2020) and expands the application of artificial intelligence, giving rise to crisis phenomena that transcend national boundaries and challenge the power of states. Realities emerge in which subjects develop, by epochal imperative, new sensibilities and cognitive capacities that alter the notion of space and time. The urban locus as a factor of stability in space and duration in time, yields to the volatility and instantaneity of the digital, modifying collective practices in urban public space.

Cities (in the Global South), characterised by their multiple temporalities and spatialities, which in themselves can be explained by their historical complexity, are confronted with the need to process new externalities that are specific to their singularities and to political, economic and cultural globalisation. Thus, the question of our times, of the anthropocene and the digital, constitutes an epiphenomenon that introduces new parameters for thinking the city as a palimpsest of meanings, material elements and social practices.

Are these worlds in ruins, human and non-human worlds produced from a logic of transience and instantaneity, of ephemeral times and amnesic spaces (A. F. Carlos), of forgetfulness and substitution? In this new era, the separation between Nature and Culture, as well as between subject and society, is unsustainable and requires new perspectives and approaches to confront the dualisms, colonialism and hegemony of the Western world.

Starting from the fact that today's city is an expression of the power of globalised capitalism, and that there is a shift from the city-work-politics triad to the city-management-business triad, enhanced by the disruptive presence of technology, we pose the following questions:

- What are the possibilities and limitations of the South in the face of the complexity of contemporary trends that imply a significant civilisational transformation?

- Do these trends constitute new threats or new opportunities for societies marked by acute inequalities?

- To what extent does the Global South propose a situated epistemology, adequate to face the challenges of the contemporary moment?

- What emerges as a development of this epistemology in relation to the values, elements and procedures of design disciplines such as Architecture and Urbanism?

We call for alternative and critical thinking about the material and symbolic processes of our cities and territories through the presentation of cases, reflections or records that give an account of how these tendencies are processed in the Global South, in a time that is experienced as the cause and consequence of a hypothetical double apocalypse: that of environmental and human collapse.

PARDO, José Luis. Disculpen las molestias, estamos transitando hacia un nuevo paradigma. En Arena, L. y Fogué, U. Planos de (inter)sección. Materiales para un diálogo entre filosofía y arquitectura. Lampreave, 2011.

SADIN, Eric. La Inteligencia artificial o el desafío del siglo. Anatomía de un antihumanismo radical. Buenos Aires, Caja Negra, 2020.

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A40 (2025) BLURRING THE LINES | EXPLORING THE JUNCTIONS BETWEEN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 

Guest editors:

Victoria Farrow Architect. Leicester School of Architecture, De Monfort University

Alona Martínez Pérez. Architect. Leicester School of Architecture, De Monfort University

submissions until May 30^th 2025 peer review until July 20^th 2025  publication September 2025

^ The real world.

^ Practice ready. 

^ Prepared for office.

These are all common phrases used within architectural education as we describe preparing graduates for completing their degree and also when in conversation with practitioners about industry expectations.  It is of course important that graduates exit from higher education ready to work and that they have the confidence to engage with tasks in the office. Whilst not the sole aim of architectural education, the prime objective should ideally rest with employability, but what other components are important when educating architects of the future? 

When discussing university with those educating groups ages 16-18, a common topic is often whether a student is ready for university. Has their previous education equipped them sufficiently to take that next step into higher education? What preparation has happened in order to explore this junction and has adequate support been given in order to create a successful trajectory? This topic of readiness is also a common theme amongst undergraduate educators as we unpack whether a student’s educational background has equipped them to feel sufficiently prepared for architectural education. For decades, it has also been common place to interrogate the junctions that happen between educational levels at architecture school. In doing so, pedagogical practice and understanding has evolved in order to create teaching methods and projects that have level appropriateness both for the “now” when in receipt of the incoming students but also for the future. Through this element of forward planning, educators aim to ensure that students within architectural education and the related design fields will enter professional practice with appropriate knowledge and a set of tools in order to perform successfully.

One question that perhaps is less often asked would be, are practices and industry “ready” for our students and what reflections are happening within industry in terms of mentoring that respond to the ever changing world and in turn, architectural training?

This particular junction where higher education meets professional practice has remained one of debate for many decades. With the profession constantly evolving and changing to accommodate our shifting society and climate, one might question if it is even possible to train graduates to be “ready” for the real world? On the same thread, architectural education continues to face pressures to meet the needs of our incoming students, whom, year on year, are also shifting in terms of their needs, aspirations and skills. Students today are joining architectural education adept and highly capable in technologies and softwares that students a decade ago were not. They are also much more aware of the challenges presented by the climate crisis; grappling with the financial crisis that is biting and familiar with a need for broader awareness of equality, diversity and inclusivity. As such, it is needed that architectural education adapts and accommodates these new types of students in order to create thoughtful new curriculums that address items such as inclusivity; AI, BIM and, new materials (to mention a few) as well as finding new pedagogical methods to deliver content. As architectural education is adjusts the front end of an architects training, how are practices reacting to our changing graduates? What conversations are happening within the profession and within architectural education about this junction post graduation and how is this being addressed?

On both sides of this critical junction, within architectural education and the profession, change has been forced as a result of the pandemic and the climate crisis. Similarly, architectural news has placed a spotlight on mistreatment, bullying, low pay, misogyny and worse happening within. The incoming changes from ARB to undergraduate education also present new challenges that must be addressed. This abstract therefore poses the question of what architectural education for future architects should look like and how the junction between the two should be treated as we progress. How do we prepare for an unknown future?

This abstract invites academics, researchers and students to give examples of projects and pedagogies being used to prepare students for the profession and to discuss how our work within architectural education is equipping students with the skills and knowledge needed for office. The abstract also invites papers from practitioners, who may or may not be staggering the boundary line between education and practice, which discuss how industry is evolving to prepare to receive new graduates and how the profession is working to accommodate the changes happening within architectural education. 

Papers responding to this abstract should take their position first on what is meant by “practice ready” and the “real world?”. It will also be necessary to declare a position as an educator, a practitioner or both.