Affiliation: Universidade de Évora, Departamento de Arquitectura, Portugal

Évora 2025

MAPPING

IMPORTANT DATES

May 9, 2025. Call for Abstracts Published
June 16, 2025. First Stage Submission (Abstracts)
July 7, 2025. Notification of Acceptance & Registration Opens
July 31, 2025. Early bird registration (80 EUR)
September 8, 2025. Second Stage Submission
September 15, 2025. Full price (120 EUR) Registration Closes
October 8–9, 2025. Workshop
October 9–11, 2025. CA²RE Évora Conference

 

CALL

We are pleased to invite submissions for the CA²RE Conference, hosted by the University of Évora under the theme MAPPING. The event welcomes researchers and practitioners from diverse fields engaged in Design-driven and Artistic Research to share and discuss their projects through intensive peer review and critical dialogue.

 

THEME – MAPPING

Traditional mapping has long been a tool to delineate physical spaces, often reflecting prevailing power structures and control mechanisms. However, mapping as a concept now seeks to transcend these conventional boundaries by incorporating both methodological and instrumental dimensions, as well as symbolic, cultural, aesthetical, and ecological aspects.

This edition of CA2RE suggests this expanded approach goes beyond traditional mapping providing an open and diverse debate that welcomes examples of multi- and trans-disciplinary thinking and doing.

It challenges established means and narratives imposed on space and territory, offering more holistic and inclusive understandings of the environments we inhabit. It stimulates alternative ways of analysing, interpreting, and researching architectural and artistic domains.

By embracing performative and critical cartographies, mapping enables the deconstruction of spaces shaped by dynamics of appropriation and control. It questions pre-existing spatial narratives while empowering communities to reclaim and reinterpret their environments through collaborative practices.

The integration of digital and physical networks of control into mapping processes further expands the field, offering a comprehensive view of how technologies shape our perceptions and interactions with space. By documenting these often-invisible forces, mapping can develop critical visualisations that reveal how territories are structured and transformed.

Drawing as a critical methodology serves as a bridge between artistic expression and spatial analysis. This hybrid form of representation fosters innovation in artistic and architectural practices, encouraging a (re)imagination of space that prioritises cultural significance and ecological sustainability.

Mapping, therefore, offers not only a method but a theoretical framework for exploring the complex relationship between human interventions and the environment. It prompts a re-evaluation of how we design, inhabit, and perceive spaces, advocating for practices sensitive to cultural narratives and environmental imperatives.

By adopting mapping concepts, researchers and practitioners can contribute to the transformation of cultural and social landscapes, promoting resilience and sustainability. This aligns with contemporary movements in architectural research that emphasise interdisciplinarity, inclusivity, and innovation.

Mapping establishes itself as a fundamental conceptual tool in the (re)imagination of spatial representation, opening pathways for more equitable and sustainable (inter)actions with our environments.

 

LINES OF RESEARCH

Following Christopher Frayling’s seminal text «Research in Art and Design», the conference proposes three lines of research, offering three different frameworks for discussion:

• Mapping INTO artistic and design driven research: Using mapping techniques to create, study, analyse, and understand art and design practices, histories, theories, urban or social contexts. Here, mapping is a tool to investigate phenomena within or about the discipline.
• Artistic and design driven research THROUGH mapping: Often associated with practice-based or design-driven research. In this case, mapping — whether drawing, diagramming, creating atlases, assembling, etc. — is the central method of research. Knowledge is generated through the act of mapping itself.
• Mapping FOR artistic and design driven research: Mapping is conducted to produce knowledge, tools, or strategies that directly inform or support future artistic or design practices, interventions, or methodologies.
We encourage PhD students and early-career researchers to position their research within one of these three lines of research.

 

1st STAGE SUBMISSION

For the submission, the applicants are asked to provide the following:

• Extended illustrated abstracts: 800-1200 words including illustrations (max two A4 pages of images, as an integral part of the submitted file) in an anonymous PDF file;
• Artefacts: 600-800 words including illustrations (max four A4 pages of images, as an integral part of the submitted file) in an anonymous PDF file;
• A short reflection on the importance and role of the design-driven research approach, methodologies, techniques and tools employed in the research project (max 250 words), referring as well to the conference’s main topic, should be included on both previous formats.
• A short CV (max 100 words) should be uploaded as a separated PDF file.
The SUBMISSIONS are open by the 16th of June through the Evora platform.

 

2nd STAGE SUBMISSION

Layout specifications will be sent with the email of acceptance.

 

IN-PERSON PRESENTATIONS

Each participant will have 60 minutes to present and discuss their work. This session with international reviewers will be regarded as a second peer review.

During the in-person presentation, participants are encouraged in experimental presentation formats through live performances, live reports from construction sites, office and research environments, movie clips, virtual 3-dimensional meeting places, etc.

 

WORKSHOP
An additional conceptual mapping workshop will be led by architect and photographer Duarte Belo. The workshop will involve collaborative research on his work and conceptual process. It will consist in the design of a photography exhibition exploring his work that will remain on display for two weeks following the CA²RE conference. The workshop shall be held at the exhibition space at Fundação Eugénio de Almeida. A conference by Duarte Belo will open the exhibition.

 

PUBLICATION

Participants’ essays will be published in the conference book of abstracts.

Selected applicants will be invited for publication, depending on the focus of the planned presentation and discussion with international reviewers. (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license).

 

VENUE

University of Évora Colégio do Espirito Santo

 

FEE

Registration fee:

• 80 EUR (early bird)
• 120 EUR (full price)
• 30 EUR (visitors)

 

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Pedro Guilherme (UÉ)
Sofia Salema (UÉ)
Edite Rosa (UBI)
Joaquim Almeida (UC)
João Menezes Sequeira (UBI)
Ana Telles (UÉ)
Maria Conceição Freire (UÉ)

 

CONTACT: ca2re@evora.pt

 

Images: @ Álvaro Siza, page 19, Sketchbook 009, October 1977; @ Álvaro Siza, page 13, Sketchbook 014, January 1978

 

Flyer