The idea of hospitals as machines for treatment still affects the way they are procured and designed, to the detriment of qualitative considerations that had been intrinsic to the evolution of hospitals since antiquity when they were first cast as cities of health. A return to the urban model is the inspiration behind a number of contemporary hospitals, where it not only creates a sense of place but provides a structure for meaningful user participation; our best hope of designing people rather than machine-centric buildings that are an appropriate, enduring response to function and context.

Adolescents in palliative care have complex emotional and developmental needs that make privacy within the built environment a crucial aspect of their comfort, dignity, and sense of control. However, in many paediatric hospice settings, privacy is often compromised by the continuous need for observation and accessibility in care delivery. This study explores how privacy in the built environment is understood and addressed in palliative care for children and adolescents, drawing on both medical and architectural perspectives. It combines a review of existing literature with qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with fourteen medical professionals and eight architects, together with a comparative examination of seven contemporary hospices. The analysis investigates spatial design features, such as bedroom layout, visibility, and zoning, shape the experience of privacy in care environments. While single bedrooms are now widely adopted, the findings of this study emphasise that these features alone may not adequately address the psychosocial and emotional dimensions of privacy. Continuous observation, glazed doors, and the placement of beds directly in line with doorways were identified as elements that can contribute to feelings of exposure and reduced autonomy. The study highlights a persistent gap between clinical functionality and environmental support for psychological well-being. It argues for more age-responsive design strategies, such as thoughtful spatial zoning, adaptable room configurations, and sensitive transitions between public and private areas, to better accommodate the needs of adolescents. Reconsidering how built environments mediate care and control can help create hospice settings that more effectively support privacy, autonomy, and dignity for young people nearing the end of life.

This paper explores activist organisations in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries that advocate for climate justice in the name of Just Transition. Just Transition, a segment of the climate justice movement, emphasises the need for those workers who will be most affected by a transition to a green economy - construction workers - to participate in the formation of the policies that will affect them. The paper makes the point that architects must recognise their role in the construction industry and hence participate in Just Transition advocacy. It explores the different organisations, in both the construction and architecture industries, that promote a Just Transition, examining the varied methods, targets, and scales of advocacy. It points out distinctions in these groups according to how far the group goes in linking Just Transition advocacy to a critique of capitalism’s call for continued growth and development. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of targeting local policymakers versus more global and systemic power brokers as well as the varied effectiveness of groups that identify as agitators, non-profit organisers, or NGOs. At the end, the author reconsiders some of the assumptions that were used in creating the ‘effectiveness’ hierarchy imposed on the listing of organisations that the paper describes and speculates on the various ways a person can be called to action in the name of Just Transition.

The contemporary role of libraries has evolved from mere information storage to facilitating engaging access to knowledge resources. Despite this shift, book reading and library usage statistics in Iran remain low. This study aims to explore the relationship between physical and spatial library features, user behaviour, and perceived meanings. The goal of this investigation is to consider the impact of spatial features within libraries on the behaviours of users and the meaning that they receive. Employing an environmental psychology approach, exploratory analyses were conducted through field research, incorporating observational techniques (behavioural attributes mapping and lists) and questionnaire-based methods (semantic differential). Three Shiraz public libraries were selected for observation, and user behaviours were documented. Questionnaire data were analysed using SPSS23 software. Findings indicate that superior physical and spatial attributes foster user attachment to libraries. The meanings of ‘ordered’, ‘pleasant’, ‘interesting’, ‘legible’, ‘open’, and ‘quiet’, along with the physical factors of ‘interior appearance’, ‘type of windows’, ‘outside view’, ‘special decorating’, ‘type of materials’, ‘inviting entrance’, ‘ceiling height’, and ‘furniture’, are influential determinants of user attachment to public libraries.

This text results from the dialogue established between two research projects within the field of Production Studies. One, a doctoral study, investigates the relationship between society and nature, highlighting contradictions within the concept of sustainability in architectural production. The other is part of ongoing postdoctoral research at the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (IAU-USP) and focuses on material culture, specifically studying aluminium production. Both studies explore their themes through the works of Sérgio Ferro, following the methodological approach of the project ‘Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledge in Architecture, Project, and Labor’ (TF/TK).Bringing these two research projects together enables an illustration, from different perspectives, of how the capitalist model of value extraction operates behind architectural production, functioning as a kind of ‘illusion game’.

This article proposes alternatives for the conceptual scaffolding needed to ecologise architecture production studies. It engages Sérgio Ferro’s seminal work O canteiro e o desenho and expands Ferro’s critique of design’s inherent role in the exploitation the building site by introducing the concept of negative accumulation, the recognition of combined human and nonhuman labour grounding value extraction, and the entropic potential of building technologies. Drawing from Denise Ferreira da Silva’s theory of labour in connection to the transduction of energy, the article reintroduces forms of labour that fall outside the juridical definition of wage work into the calculus of value, and amends Ferro’s original claim for the liberation of construction work with the notions of reparation and restitution. Additionally, it presents the rupture of ecological relations as the grounding action in turning humans and nonhumans into propertied property, as explored by Ferreira da Silva and Kathryn Yusoff. By recognising the combined human and nonhuman labour resulting from mutually exacerbating movements of extraction, the article presents the possibility that design also reassembles previously disaggregated nonhuman labour towards the production of architecture. Finally, it draws on Bernard Stiegler’s work to focus on the entropic tendencies of technics as expressed in the building site and on how the configuration of these sites impacts workers’ style of energy expenditure and individuation. It proposes that the economy of resources in construction should also be understood as an economy of gestures and an economy of energy, and that this perspective can be extended to other sites of production.

Brasília, the iconic modernist capital of Brazil, has sparked diverse interpretations and reactions over the past six decades. While celebrated as a prime example of Brazilian modernism and international functionalist urbanism, it has also faced criticism for its perceived rupture with traditional cultural patterns. This article delves into the relationship between modernity, tradition, and coloniality in Brasília, exploring the city through the lens of decolonial theory. By examining the discourse surrounding Brasília and its urban architecture, particularly the Alvorada Palace, the article aims to uncover how coloniality manifests within the city’s modernity. It argues that modernism in architecture indeed embodies coloniality as a system of domination. The spatial characteristics, spatial organisation, sectorisation, hierarchies, and symbolism embedded within Alvorada Palace serve as a starting point for analysing Brasília’s symbolic and spatial dimensions. Ultimately, this research sheds light on the intricate connections between modernity and coloniality, inviting a critical re-evaluation of Brasília’s architectural and cultural identity.

The Knoxville International Energy Exposition, held in 1982, was the first world’s fair in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) participated. Shortly after the rapprochement between the PRC and the United States, the erection of the Chinese Pavilion in Knoxville overlapped a ‘honeymoon’ period of the two nations, marked by growing political and architectural exchange after decades of isolation. This article argues that the Chinese Pavilion at the Knoxville fair materialises China’s enthusiastic yet discreet interaction with the US during moments of diplomatic sensitivity, economic uncertainty, and shifting ideological positions in the 1970s and 1980s. Constructed at the height of the Cold War, the pavilion symbolised the PRC’s diplomatic success in rebuilding its relations with the Western Bloc, while the realisation of the pavilion was challenged by sensitive political issues, China’s limited budget, and a lack of exhibits. Under China’s new Reform and Opening-Up policy, the building also marked a turning point in pavilion design for the country in international events, with a significant shift of focus from overt ideological promotion to a self-orientalised cultural display through the pavilion’s design process. It illuminates a key moment in the architectural history of modern China when the nation’s growing self-awareness of its global image prompted its officials, exhibition planners, and architects to reconsider the relationship between pavilion design and the architectural profession.

Paul Auster’s novel The Book of Illusions provides a meditation on to whom our deeds in a short life are known. In architecture, How to Play the Environment Game (HTPTEG) and its creator – Theo Crosby – are condensations of many of the same meditations. Fifty years after HTPTEG it is worth reflecting on what the exhibition, the book and the person tell us about architecture, its materialization, individual architects and even the value of canonical interpretations of architecture and its personalities. HTPTEG represented the impossibility of architectural intentionality in the production of the built environment and prompts the question of whether Crosby was content to disappear as an individual recognized in his own right and with his own distinct effects on the canon?

Timber, forests, and plantations are increasingly positioned within global visions of architectural futures as critical to the future of architecture, both materially and discursively. Yet current global timber imaginaries tend to produce aestheticised environmental relations and rely heavily on desituated accounts given to the selection of materials for construction. This article resituates contemporary architectural knowledges of timber, following Araucaria cunninghamii (hoop pine) through a deep-dive case study into a complex web of ecological, historical, colonial, economic, aesthetic, and cultural relations. In thus resituating knowledges of hoop pine, a fuller entanglement with what is materially ongoing within colonial and ecological injustices is revealed, setting out a critical first step towards situated imaginaries in practice.

Paul Klee’s famous conception of drawing - as a ‘line [that] goes out for a walk’ - points to a significant question regarding agency and intentionality in design. In short, does the line ‘go out’ for a walk, or is it ‘taken’ for one? This paper questions whether the point, the line, and other potentially unconsidered actors, could have agency in the process of drawing, or whether this is something reserved for the intentional artist or architect alone. This paper engages the metaphysical framework of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) to explore this tension, suggesting that if the line were to sincerely ‘go out’ for a walk, then it is possible to imagine an expanded concept of agency beyond such intentional limitations. OOO is a philosophy founded on a realist structure of objects existing independently of their relations. In the object-oriented cosmos, everything is equally an object, including humans, nonhumans, non-living beings, and even non-physical and fictional entities. The radical levelling ambition of this ‘flat ontology’ highlights a curious and unresolved balancing of intentional humans alongside the many behavioural or inanimate ‘things’ of the cosmos. This paper thus engages the flat ontology of OOO alongside creative drawing practices, to reconsider agency as something not possessed by distinct beings engaged within any interaction, but rather in the interaction itself. This position critiques notions of control and certainty, offering a potential practice of kinship and collaboration in design, beyond the human sphere.

This article analyses the impacts of modernisation projects and conservation policies on Traditional territories in Brazil, highlighting the resistance and adaptation strategies developed by rubber tappers, everlasting flower gatherers, vazanteiros, and veredeiros. Critiquing the notions of nature implicit in both modernisation projects and conservation policies, the text draws on decolonial ecology and environmental racism to assess how territorial expropriation and environmental degradation have disproportionately affected Traditional Communities while benefiting exclusionary economic development models. Each case examined illustrates this dynamic based on the historical constitution and way of life of the groups in question. The article argues that conservation policies, by adopting an exclusionary vision of nature, often disregard the knowledge and rights of Traditional Communities, perpetuating social and environmental inequalities. It concludes that biodiversity conservation efforts must integrate the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of local communities, challenging hegemonic logics of development and conservation.

‘Literalism,’ which seeks to use descriptive language in a technically regimented and exacting manner without figuration, is shown as an incoherent linguistic ideal in architectural history writing. By attending to its four primary presumptions, which prop up a larger issue, literalism is exposed as not only flawed but troublesome in a global discipline. In contrast, the essay advocates for non-literal language as a living, disclosive, sometimes epiphanic vocabulary, over and against literalism’s dead and instrumental one. The former, it is argued, can manifest potent but hard to grasp matters operating in the tension between the symbolic and communicative dimensions of architecture. Thus, non-literal language is able to deepen not obscures historical understanding via architectural descriptions.

In the context of escalating global environmental pressures and ecological breakdown, current trajectories of material resource use in the construction sector are overwhelming the regenerative capacity of the biosphere, causing severe repercussions to the interdependencies of humans and ecosystems across different scales. Research into bio-based building materials such as hemp, straw, stone, and earth has received widespread attention as a holistic tool for envisioning human development on a stable and resilient planet. However, the supply of these materials at scale remains dependent upon the continuation (and expansion, in some cases) of an economic and political model that is based on large-scale extraction and dependent upon an infinite resource pool. We argue that materials are not fixed commodities but are continuous with the landscapes they come from: co-constituted by people's livelihoods, land ownership and cultivation models, and more-than-human inhabitants, so they should not be separated from these entangled relations. This research critically examines what the shift to a bio-based construction material palette means for current material-ecological systems, and what new natures are born from these interspecies sociomaterial relations. Focusing on bats (a high mobility, keystone species in the UK) to re-evaluate how the production and use of bio-based materials is an interspecies endeavour, here we map out the systemic cracks in land use, ecology, and conservation planning created by capitalist structures. We found that the excluded relations fall under three typologies: value, temporality, and knowledge. Our research also revealed how systems of material production can create spaces for alternative forms of cohabitation and non-extractive production, or interspecies repair. This critical study makes a case for a broader discussion of interspecies spatial-ecologies born out of new bio-based architectures.

This paper is about the neighbourhoods known and remembered by a particular pattern of social relations and specific, recurrent rituals. It delves into the nuanced dynamics of place-making within the historic pu-jing neighbourhoods of Quanzhou, utilizing an approach that combines architectural ethnography and ‘research by drawing’. After an exploration of the daily practices and festive rituals intertwined within these neighbourhoods, the paper reflects on the enduring cultural significance and deep-rooted identity shaping these spaces over generations. It underscores the critical role of collective agency in preserving these intimate, historically rich spaces amidst the contemporary challenges posed by global homogeneity, offering valuable insights into the resilience of community identity and the perpetual contestation between local authenticity and global homogeneity in contemporary urban contexts.

Through a discussion of a place awaiting development this article asks: what is ecologically and culturally at stake in the production of large-scale, suburban housing? Examining a case study of a proposed 2,700-unit development in North Tyneside, UK, the article offers a multi-narrative account of the various political-economic, ecological, and cultural landscape factors at risk in these processes of building. The paper develops an approach which links a political-economy perspective - through a focus on the political and economic drivers and processes of housing development - to a micro-focus on affect and place attachment. Drawing on diary entries, ecological surveys, policy analysis, creative responses, interviews, and prose, the article highlights the cultural meaning the proposed development site holds for local people, and the importance of well-maintained arable environments for protecting biodiversity. The paper urges the need to rethink value and care in the production of housing, to get a better deal for both human and more-than-human nature.