In the issue 15 we publish a Thematic Dossier with a series of papers, which address intervention strategies in and with the community through artistic processes. The texts published result from presentations made in the international conference “Art, Materiality and Representation” organized by the Royal Anthropological Institute in collaboration with the British Museum and the Department of Anthropology of SOAS, in London. We also invited the architect Pere Buil for an interview where he shared his academic and professional path – thus following the new editorial line that explores research and thematic fields that are close to Architecture. Finally, this issue also includes a critical review of the book Colonial Modern. Aesthetics of the past – Rebellions for the future, by the architect-researcher Paulo Moreira.

In issue 11, Estudo Prévio pursues its original editorial project – rooted in academia while fostering critical thinking and sharing of knowledge, mixing knowledge and research from different parts of the world and professional backgrounds as the number of contributors to the journal increases throughout its 6 years of existence.

At a time when debate on scientific research has taken a new turn – namely due to the demands regarding indexation and a normalization of knowledge dissemination – and the role of the researcher in architecture requires redefinition, we consider crucial that different and innovative perspectives and approaches contribute to thought and reflection on the city and on architecture. The fact that Estudo Prévio is a journal developed in project-oriented school of architecture encourages publication of practical experiences that may contribute to a wider theoretical framework. Nevertheless, more conventional approaches deriving from ongoing research should still be welcome.

As a result, this is a heterogeneous issue that includes an interview with landscape architect João Gomes da Silva, who is also a lecturer at UAL, a wide variety of research papers on the city of Lisbon, as well as papers evidencing research conducted for PhD theses on different themes such as recent Turkish architecture or the column as an architectural element. Two reviews on books on the city of Lisbon are also included – “A internacionalização de Lisboa – paradiplomacia de uma cidade” and “Lisboa. Uma cidade em movimento“, making this an issue focused on the city we live in at a time when Lisbon expands at tourist and economic levels.

The issue 10 of the journal Estudo Prévio continues the new cycle the journal is now in. In this cycle we maintain the original editorial objectives – to promote academic discussion and exchange of knowledge among academics, crossing experiences and research from different locations and professional backgrounds – while aiming to widen the scope of collaborations.

At a time when the debate on scientific research has gained a new perspective – namely regarding indexation together with standardization of the conveying of knowledge – and that research on architecture has increased, we believe we should focus on innovative themes and different approaches which contribute to research on the city and on architecture. Since Estudo Prévio is a journal linked to an architecture school with a strong tradition in project design has led us to publishing on practice that may contribute to a broader theoretical thought. However, we cannot ignore more conventional approaches, resulting from decades of scientific production.

Thus, we invited Professor Ana Tostões, full professor at a Portuguese university, to coordinate and organize a set of papers on a specific theme/issue using different approaches. We proudly accepted to organize an issue devoted to Nuno Teotónio Pereira, which gathers texts from different authors in memoriam of this important Portuguese architect. Our collection also includes the news of a book by Nuno Teotónio Pereira, recently launched by Lisbon City Hall, by Rita Megre. The issue includes a review by André Fernandes of Han Meyer’s book, City and Port. Finally, in this issue we interviewed architect Telmo Cruz.

In issue 9, Estudo Prévio pursues its original editorial project – rooted in academia while fostering critical thinking and sharing of knowledge, mixing knowledge and research from different parts of the world and professional backgrounds – but also intends to increase the scope of the contributors to the journal.

At a time when debate on scientific research has taken a new turn – namely due to the demands regarding indexation and a normalization of knowledge dissemination – and the role of the researcher in architecture requires redefinition, we consider crucial that different and innovative perspectives and approaches contribute to thought and reflection on the city and on architecture. The fact that Estudo Prévio is a journal developed in project-oriented school of architecture encourages publication of practical experiences that may contribute to a wider theoretical framework. Nevertheless, more conventional approaches deriving from ongoing research should still be welcome.

In this context, we invited the architect and professor Paulo Tormenta Pinto and challenged him to coordinate and organize a thematic dossier – “Building in the South – Laboratory for the foundations of contemporary Portuguese architecture” -, addressing different approaches to this theme / problem. The theme is itself a new approach to the architecture made in the South, and brings together a group of authors and studies involved in the dissemination of the research related to this topic, revealing innovative and relevant research, still little explored and published. This issue also includes three articles resulting from our direct invitation to the speakers of a series of conferences held at Da/UAL dedicated to architectural production in the southern hemisphere by key authors on these topics such as Ana Tostões and Ana Magalhães.

With the issue 8, Estudo Prévio starts a new cycle, which – maintaining the original editorial project, rooted in academia while fostering critical thinking and sharing of knowledge, mixing knowledge and research from different parts of the world and professional backgrounds – intends to broaden the scope of contributors.

At a time when debate on scientific research has taken a new turn – namely due to the demands regarding indexation and a normalization of knowledge dissemination – and the role of the researcher in architecture requires redefinition, we consider crucial that different and innovative perspectives and approaches contribute to thought and reflection on the city and on architecture. The fact that Estudo Prévio is a journal developed in project-oriented school of architecture encourages publication of practical experiences that may contribute to a wider theoretical framework. Nevertheless, more conventional approaches deriving from ongoing research should still be welcome.

In this context, we invited for the next issues authors with relevant work in research towards to the city, architecture and territory. These editors are invited to coordinate and organize thematic dossiers, with different approaches the themes. The first guest, the anthropologist Maria Assunção Gato, specialist in research on house and spatial anthropology of space, coordinated the dossier “Ethnographies of the house, values and ways of living”, gathering a group of authors and studies with whom we believe we have taken an important step in the dissemination of research related to home, a fundamental and comprehensive research area, but still little explored and published. This issue also includes two articles, in response to our open invitation for article submissions, one dedicated to the contribution of geographic information technologies to territorial planning (Susana Brito and Teresa Santos) and another to research in architectural design (Joana Vilhena).

With the issue 7 of the journal Estudo Prévio, we complete four years of publication, with eight editions, from issue 0 to the current issue 7. We started in 2011, with the ambition of creating an editorial project located in the academy, which would promote thought and knowledge sharing through the spoken and written word, crossing knowledge and investigations from different geographic and professional locations.

At a time when research in Architecture is still open and even in question, we wanted to cross themes that addressed contemporary and recurrent issues in the profession, from the Crisis and Participated Architecture to the Suburbs and Neighborhoods. In this issue we publish an interview with the architect Ricardo Carvalho, current Director of the Department of Architecture at the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, an article in the area of Law, opening the range to interdisciplinary collaborations, a theoretical research article on architecture and a dossier of three masters dissertations, aiming to disseminate the quality research carried out at universities, in this case at UAL and ISCTE.

Through the interviews, we surveyed the academic and professional paths of internationally recognized architects, who cross practice with the academy and, in some cases, with research and publication/dissemination of Architecture. We also reviewed books that are unavoidable references in ateliers and universities and presented more recent ones, which also became important to think about the territories of architecture and knowledge. The commitment to a bilingual journal and image quality were assumed the beginning of the project, and supported by UAL as fundamental for the dissemination of the contents. We reached forty thousand readers over these four years.

Architecturology (Caroline Lecourtois, 2014), Research-by-design (Johan De Walsche, 2014), Action research (Johan De Walsche, 2014) , Research based design (Jorgen Hauberg, 2014), Practice based research, Research trough Architecture, Research in Architecture (João Menezes Sequeira, 2014) were concepts exposed and debated at the 3rd International Conference on Architecture and Research on Research at Architecture/Research in Architecture (Labart – Architecture Laboratory of the Centro de Estudos da Universidade Lusófona – April 2011). These concepts reflect the different types of approach to research in architecture currently debated in academic and professional circles.

The architects interviewed in the various Estúdio Prévio issue were very determined saying that the professional practice in which they are involved – carrying out architectural projects, from territorial analysis to the completion of the work, going through all the research processes and selection of constructive methodologies and respective materials – is in itself a valid method of research, as it follows the procedure of any other type of investigation: Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. Starting from a set of principles, new questions arise – which, curing the process, are acepted, rejected and solved in a finished work, shared by all.

The problems raised by recent doctoral theses in Research through Architecture focuse on its validity as an object of study, especially when architects/researchers choose to work on their own architectural production. In a way, this new doctoral aspect forces us to be more open about the themes validated by the academy since, until very recently, only research was carried out on the History of Architecture (monographs and thematic historiographies), Urbanism or Technique in Architecture (constructive methods and constitutive elements).

As research topic, the neighborhood (Bairro) still is an urban object that goes side by side with the city’s history and remains alive in the daily life and in the collective memory of its inhabitants, beyond the physical and functional changes that are occurring.

Habitar is closely linked to the beginning of architecture and the house has always represented the possibility of working on a program that questions all the values of the discipline as well as the problems each person values in their daily well-being.

Currently, we live in a moment without universal dogmas, but it can be said that, in terms of house designs, we observe a Japanese-influenced fashion that paints everything white and frees spaces for hybrid uses, functionally disaggregated from everyday reality. On the other hand, with the growing remodeling market in “Crisis Europe”, there is a critical inertia that uses the same imagery for all projects: light gray wooden or self-leveling floors, walls, ceilings, kitchen and bathroom. white bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, 2 or 3 bathrooms…

Surveys and investigation works such as the Popular Architecture Survey or the studies on Social Housing carried out by LNEC under the coordination of the architect Nuno Portas or, internationally, studies on housing carried out by authors such as Engels, Alison and Peter Smithson, contributed to understand the different domestic architectures in specific territories, cultures and populations. On the other hand, the global dissemination of architectural projects added the number of possible references, prone to the uncritical use of collages and transposed influences. for the house project. At the same time, paradoxically, there is a growing interest in local materials and techniques and in their integration into contemporary architecture works. Currently, we live in an age without universal dogmas, but it can be said that, in terms of house designs, there is a Japanese-influenced fashion that paints everything white and frees spaces for hybrid uses, functionally separated from everyday reality. On the other hand, with the growing remodeling market in the “Europe of Crisis”, we are witnessing a critical inertia that uses the same imagery for all projects: wooden floors or light gray self-leveling, walls, ceilings, kitchen and bathroom. white bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, 2 or 3 bathrooms…

During the Cold War, the world was divided into three different categories that grouped countries according to their alliance: First World (United States, Western Europe, South Africa and Australia), Second World (USSR; Japan and Cuba) and Third World (Africa, Middle East and South America). This designation was changed with the fall of the Soviet Union into a social-economic concept that still divided the world in three parts, but now as Developed Countries, Developing Countries and Undeveloped Countries. Currently, although this division is not agreed among the various global organizations, all are ruled by statistical indicators that establish different relationships and hierarchies (economic, social, human and political) between countries – which inevitably lead to calling them Developing Countries and Emerging Countries. Currently, the list of Emerging Countries from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) includes about 150 countries, from Ethiopia and Yemen, to Croatia and Brazil.

Countries with emerging economies are and will always be a breeding ground for new proposals, new projects, enabling them to achieve theoretical hypotheses and even projects which initially might have been difficult to handle. Over the past twenty years, we have seen the worldwide development and economic growth of several countries – China, United Arab Emirates, and more recently, Angola and Brazil, among others – and following that same growth has always been the possibility of implementing many projects and proposals for a new century.

At a time when most of our architects are emigrating, or working from Portugal for emerging countries we propose with this issue to open the overdue debate on the type of activities done by Europeans in emerging countries and also on the type of requests made from those countries, to know what they think about the work of those emigrating professionals or “remote control” professionals. For a new generation of architects, freed from the colonial past, the personal challenge is working in countries, where they can speak the same language, and also the professional opportunity of seeing their projects built. However, even if – as referred by José Adrião in his interview in this issue – young architects are well prepared from a technical and conceptual point of view, when facing the reality many questions and doubts appear: what kind of architecture can be made in these contexts and how? What is expected from the architect is it a “foreign” professional, an agent of modernity, or a professional that integrates models and promotes continuity? How do you overcome existing barriers (linguistic, cultural, technical and even the size of the territories)? How to take advantage of what can be innovative and potentially interesting in territories under construction?

Around the 1980s, in Portugal, following a trend that was already observable in many European cities, there was a paradigm shift in the attraction of cities, moving from the centripetal phase (where the city attracted people to its center) to a centrifugal phase (where the city expanded in a horizontal and dispersed movement). Since then, until today, many of these suburbs have grown without planning and with no ambition of spatial planning, which results in an expanded territory, dispersed and uncoordinated.

Despite the efforts of some initiatives to resolve various peri-urban areas, the truth is that most of them resulted in specific arrangements for some medium-sized cities and did not indicate any resolution for the disconnectivity of the various suburban centers, still dependent on the mother city. The figure of the planner – whether he is an urban planner or an architect – is often distant from any discussion of the suburbs, resulting in the production of territorial management instruments without a “concept”, which results in an overlap of instruments that do not help to solve problems effectively, creating growing contradictions. Even in terms of architectural production, few author architects receive orders placed in the suburbs, generating a professional myth that “you can’t do anything properly” except in the cities – excluding, of course, holiday homes or holiday homes. weekends, in bucolic spaces.

In this context, the widening of the discussion, and the possible demystification of the suburbs, is hampered by the ambiguity and dispersion that the concept is capable of assimilating. The suburb has become a word capable of integrating and signifying completely disparate spaces such as the segregated neighborhood (r), the periphery, the city limits, the neighborhoods, the industrial zones, satellite cities, outskirts, garden- cities, informal city, non-place, or, peri-urban territories.

The practice of Architecture is intrinsically linked to life on Earth, to its climate variations, to the different development stages of each population and to each one of its local and global specificities. And it is from this point of view that nothing is excluded from practice in architecture.