About the International Conference for the 5th issue of Sophia Journal
Authors: Pedro Leão Neto  
Published: June 2021

The International Conference on the 5th issue of Sophia Journal, which took place at FAUP, opened a new cycle of international forums, henceforth to be held annually, and taking up the theme and topics examined in Sophia for each year.
Sophia Journal’s International Conference presented both a live and videoconference program organized by CEAU / FAUP, in partnership with UNIZAR and DECA / ID - U. Aveiro. The event was broadcast live online, encompassing a rich and diverse program: (i) a series of videoconferences; (ii) the roundtable launch and presentation of the 4th issue of the peer reviewed journal Sophia: “Visual Spaces of Change: Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space through Photography and Image”; (iii) the presentations of articles of the 5th issue of Sophia Journal: “Visual Spaces of Change: Designing Interiority - shelter, shape, place, atmosphere”; (iv) the launch of the open call for papers for the 6th issue of Sophia Journal: “Visual Spaces Of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations”; (v) the announcement of the awards of the International Competition of Ideas: Exhibition and Mobile Projector and the Visual Spaces of Change exhibition, developed for this conference and for the spaces of FAUP, where new contemporary photography projects will be communicated, as well as a new exhibition structure that was awarded with the first prize in the International Competition of Ideas: Exhibition and Mobile Projector.
The objective of these international forums is to promote the reflection and debate on the universes of Architecture, Art and Image, addressing various issues transversal to the worlds of Photography and Architecture, and exploring how the image can be a means to cross borders and shift boundaries between different disciplines. This event provided the opportunity to visit the exhibition of the Visual Spaces of Change Projects developed for this conference using FAUP’s interior and outdoor spaces, featuring novel projects in the new exhibition modular structure, which awarded the first prize to Sérgio Magalhães representing studium.creative studio. The Visual Spaces of Change research project proposes a visual communication strategy based on the development of contemporary photography projects that reflect upon different dynamics of urban change to open new horizons of public intervention in the public space.
Wilfried Wang (UTSOA) O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and Guest Editor of Issue #6 of Sophia journal: “Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations” announced the open call for this 6th issue of Sophia journal. This issue will bring together photographers and researchers who make significant contributions to these discussions, including the material processes of creating, managing and interpreting sets of documents. We are interested in material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation in their expanded fields and contextualized by larger systems: cultural, political, artistic, technical, and historical dimensions.
Finally, some words about the published content in Sophia’s other sections besides the peer reviewed articles, with the former having been integrated into the journal’s structure as a way of enrichening the publication with diverse viewpoints from experts in the field and other types of readings apart from the articles from the call.
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