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THE PLAN Journal (TPJ) is an open, inclusive, non-ideological and independent platform, founded on an ongoing praxis of criticality. The journal aims at disseminating and promoting innovative, thought-provoking and relevant research, studies and criticism in architecture, design and urbanism. In addition, the TPJ wants to enrich the dialog between research and the professional fields, in order to encourage both applicable new knowledge and intellectually driven and locally relevant modes of practice. With an overarching concern for recognizing quality research, the criteria for selecting contributions will be: innovation, clarity of purpose and method, and the potential transformational impact on disciplinary fields or the broader socio-cultural context.

Latest Articles

 Open Access
THEORY
Book Review

Representation Restricted Reality (RRR). Marianna Charitonidou on Architectural Drawings

by: Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 185 - 190 published: 2025-07-09

 

Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices. 

Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century

By Marianna Charitonidou

Foreword by Gevork Hartoonian

Routledge, 2023

6 x 0.75 x 9.25 in. [15.2 x 2 x 23.5 cm]

39 B/W illustrations

298 pages

US$133.00 (hardback)

US$54.99 (paperback)

US$49.49 (eBook)

November 28, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-032-43110-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-44418-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-37208-0 (ebk)

 Subscribers only
THEORY
Essay

Train Yourself: Architectural Recycling Between Digital and Physical Realities

by: Andy Bako VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 23 published: 2025-06-30

As generative AI reshapes architectural practice, a critical paradox emerges: while new computational tools offer unprecedented creative possibilities, the physical resources essential to building grow increasingly scarce. This paper investigates how architecture can productively engage this tension through novel approaches to material recycling and digital transformation. Rather than treating physical and virtual domains separately, this research proposes an integrative framework where design emerges through continuous feedback between material manipulation and computational processing. The exhibition Train Yourself demonstrates this methodology, presenting a series of experimental artifacts that evolve through iterative exchanges between physical material, AI-driven formal exploration, and imaging techniques. These hybrid objects gain definition through recursive operations that blur boundaries between physical construction and digital representation. Beyond resource conservation, this approach reveals how architectural practice might cultivate new forms of creative intelligence capable of navigating between material constraints and computational possibilities. The findings of this research suggest a mode of practice where designers orchestrate dynamic interactions between physical matter, algorithmic processes, and human intention, pointing toward a more nuanced understanding of ecological sensitivity in contemporary design practice.

 Subscribers only
PEDAGOGY
Article

Buildings as Educators. The Pedagogical Value of the School of Architecture Building

by: Roberto Castillo Melo VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 23 published: 2025-06-30

In the field of architectural education, unlike other college majors, learners and educators can search their immediate physical environment for evidence of inspiration for design ideas. As a building type, the school of architecture does not just provide a learning environment, but it can also influence design and pedagogical agendas. This paper examines the influence of the school of architecture and design building on the pedagogical experience of faculty and students by considering its role as physical evidence of design philosophies and its impact on the development of specific pedagogical agendas. The investigation looked into three case studies located in diverse geographical and cultural contexts that are also representative of multiple approaches to design education, focusing on understanding the relationship between formal and spatial systems and pedagogical directions.

 Subscribers only
THEORY
Essay

The Contemporary City as Archipelago: From O.M. Ungers’ Berlin to the Global Collage City

by: Gregorio Froio , Monica Manicone , Matteo Benedetti VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 21 published: 2025-06-23

This essay critically examines the continuing relevance of the archipelago city – as theorized by Oswald Mathias Ungers in the 1970s – as a morphological and conceptual framework for understanding contemporary urban conditions. Originally developed in response to the fragmentation and depopulation of post-war Berlin, the archipelago city posits a model of urban organization based on autonomous, differentiated spatial units or ‘islands’ within a continuous green matrix. The essay situates this model within a broader theoretical lineage, drawing connections with Colin Rowe’s “collage city,” Aldo Rossi’s theories of typology and memory, and Rem Koolhaas’s concept of “junkspace.” Through morphological and compositional analysis, it explores how Ungers’ vision has been reinterpreted in projects from the 1990s to the present, including proposals by Franco Purini and Laura Thermes. These case studies highlight the adaptability of the archipelago paradigm in the contexts of accelerated urbanization, formal heterogeneity, and socio-political complexity. Finally, the essay reflects on the limitations and potentials of the model in an age marked by globalized urban development, the rise of the zone and the increasing marginalization of architectural agency.

 Open Access
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Essay

Rain, Rain, Go Away: Geoengineering and the Illusion of Control

by: Hannibal Newsom VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 22 published: 2025-06-17

“Geoengineering” is increasingly seen as the best, perhaps even last, hope in the fight against global warming. Calls for such practices as Solar Radiation Management are becoming urgent as the effects of the climate crisis make themselves visible. This essay uses California’s Salton Sea, a geo-engineered palimpsest of once natural terrain turned toxic and inhospitable through human intervention, as a case study against the illusion of control. Through the critical lens of Magical Realism and the visual language of the architecture studio, this essay calls into question the desire to exert human control over natural systems, illustrating that the unintended consequences of such efforts will only serve to compound the problems they were initially meant to resolve.

 Open Access
CRITICISM
Polemic

The Monstrous Hybrids in Our Midst. Jane Jacobs and the Dark Age Ahead

by: Thomas Fisher VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 11 published: 2025-06-10

We are honored to receive, and proudly publish, Tom Fisher’s acceptance speech for his 2025 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion award. [MS]

 

ABSTRACT - The political and social disruptions that often follow pandemics have accelerated many countries, including the United States, toward what Jane Jacobs described in her last book, entitled Dark Age Ahead (2004). This essay looks at Jacobs’ description of the characteristics of cultures that fall into a dark age and how we can see signs of them arising around the world today. Following that analysis, this essay explores what Jacobs calls the “five pillars” that stand against such cultural collapse and how the architecture and design community can help reinforce those pillars.

 Open Access
TECTONICS
Article

Opus Luteum: Incorporating a Third Dimension to Tilt-up Concrete Wall Panels

by: Pablo Moyano Fernandez VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 19 published: 2025-06-10

Tilt-up concrete wall construction is a casting alternative to cast-in-place and precast systems. The panels are cast horizontally on site and tilted up to a vertical position, forming strong building envelopes. Some remarkable features of the tilt-up system are the durability, speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of the process compared to other conventional construction systems. Tilt-up construction is characterized by the simplicity of the casting method; using a flat floor slab as formwork on site, the outcome is typically flat panels. This article showcases the design and construction of tilt-up concrete panels that incorporate a third dimension to the typical flat panel using soil as formwork. Earth, the most primitive and basic construction material, can support an efficient mold-making system that is environmentally sensitive. This innovative approach utilizes an accessible, economical, and reusable local material that allows the configuration of molds with double-curvature surfaces that can provide additional structural rigidity and stability to the concrete panels. The production of concrete building envelopes with complex geometries opens a range of design possibilities for load-bearing building envelopes with simple and affordable means.

 Subscribers only
CRITICISM
Essay

Seven Charging Stations of the Soul

by: Andreas Luescher VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 1 - 22 published: 2025-06-18

Contemporary alpine chapels have emerged over the past decade driven by the dialogue between the inner world of personal experience and the outer world of the built environment. These chapels are gems located in the pre-alps, where livestock still graze on mountain pastures in the warmer months. The seven alpine chapels discussed in this article take on various forms and purposes, such as a place for prayer, a destination for a pilgrimage, and a place for baptisms and burials. As sacred architecture, chapels were perhaps not seen as epochal creations, but these spaces change the definition and understanding of what a contemporary chapel can be. The seven contemporary award-winning European chapels included in this essay introduce a new architectural vocabulary that challenge the traditional notions of a chapel and its function. The paper articulates a specific relational network (Beziehungsgeflecht) as it explores an analogy between outside nature (physical features) and internal nature (the human organism) that is woven between the human, personal, and emotional experiences one may have while visiting these structures.

 Open Access
THEORY
Book Review

Boredom and the Architectural Imagination. Rudofsky, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steinberg in Andreea Mihalache’s Research

by: Luis Miguel [Koldo] Lus Arana VOLUME 10/2025 - Issue 1 , Pages: 191 - 199 published: 2025-07-09

 

Boredom and the Architectural Imagination. 

Rudofsky, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steinberg

By Andreea Mihalache

University of Virginia Press, 2024

7 x 1.25 x 8 in. [17.8 cm x 3.2 x 20.3 cm]

45 illustrations (35 b/w, 10 color)

238 pages (hardback & paperback)

288 pages (eBook)

US$115.00 (hardback)

US$34.50 (paperback)

US$34.50 (eBook)

August 5, 2024

ISBN: 978-0-813-95156-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-813-95157-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-813-95158-4 (ebk)

 

Featured Articles

 Open Access
Position Paper

AI Time, Timing, and Timelessness

by: Phil Bernstein VOLUME 8/2023 - Issue 2 , Pages: 207 - 213 published: 2024-01-12
 Open Access
Position Paper

The Right to Housing: A Holistic Perspective. From Concept to Advocacy, Policy, and Practice

by: Ron Shiffman VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 269 - 267 published: 2023-01-10
 Open Access
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Opinion

Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age: A Conversation

by: Michael A. Arbib , Meredith Banasiak , Bob Condia , Colin Ellard , Jonathan Enns , Melissa Farling , Robert Lamb Hart , Richard Hassell , Eduardo Macagno , Harry Mallgrave , Fred Marks , Juhani Pallasmaa , Sarah Robinson VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 28 published: 2021-05-14

We received and we gladly publish this conversation among distinguished theorists and scholars on an important topic, also aligned with the cross-disciplinary mission of our journal. [MS]

 

ABSTRACT - The article offers a multi-author conversation charting the future of architecture in light of the apparent tension between Baukultur, which combines the culture of building and the building of this culture, and the rapid changes brought about by digital technology, embracing cybernetics and artificial intelligence. The article builds on a discussion of Baukultur to debate in what sense buildings are “machines for living in,” then examines neuromorphic architecture wherein cybernetic mechanisms help buildings sense the needs of their occupants. It closes with an example of a building complex, Kampung Admiralty, that combines cybernetic opportunities with a pioneering approach to building “community and biophilia” into our cities. This article interleaves an abridged version of Michael Arbib’s (2019) article “Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age,” 1 with extensive comments by the co-authors.

 Open Access
Position Paper

Gender Matters. The Grand Architectural Revolution

by: Dörte Kuhlmann, Guest-Editor VOLUME 4/2019 - Issue 2 [GENDER MATTERS], Pages: 273 - 279 published: 2020-02-07
 Subscribers only
CRITICISM
Essay

Japanese Architecture Returns to Nature: Sou Fujimoto in Context

by: Botond Bognar VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 36 published: 2022-05-16

We received and we gladly publish a contribution by distinguished author Prof. Botond Bognar. [MS]

 

ABSTRACT - The essay introduces the development of Sou Fujimoto’s architecture as it has been influenced by various sources and experiences leading to his recently completed and highly recognized major project, the  House of Hungarian Music in Budapest. Among these influences the contemporary economic and political conditions in Japan and beyond, as well as the nature-inspired work of prominent Japanese designers are discussed. Touching upon the seminal work by Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito, the essay also highlights the contrasts and occasional similarities between the so-called “White School” and “Red School” in contemporary Japanese architecture, in referencing nature as the primary source of their designs. Today, these “schools” are best represented, respectively, by the activities of SANAA and Kengo Kuma. Although Fujimoto’s architecture is clearly derivative and part of the radically minimalist White School, the House of Hungarian Music reveals an intimacy and richness 

in articulating its relationship to the surrounding natural environment, which quality, if perhaps momentarily, points beyond the minimalism of the “Whites.”

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