OPEN CALL MATERIA ARQUITECTURA N°29

CIVICNESS

ARCHITECTURE AND THE POLITICS OF THE PUBLIC REALM

 

Guest editors: Anna Livia Friel & Agustina Labarca Gatica

Submission deadline: August 30,2025

Publication date: December 2025.

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The term character in architecture has long been contested. During the 17th century, it was defined as rational manifestation of a building’s function; later, Romanticism reframed it as an expression of personal and, by extension, national identity. Civic character of buildings, however, is often easier to recognize than to define. Historically, it has relied on a codified architectural language—designed to make power legible and to support the process of nation-building. These operations are deeply bounded to formal representation. Civic buildings tens to embody a social consensus—whether negotiated or imposed—that renders them intelligible to both experts and the public. Yet such consensus is never fixed in time, nor immune to reinterpretation or contestation.

Despite their different histories, geographies, technologies, and formal expressions, civic character remains recognizable in projects as different as Washington D.C. and Brasília. The symbolic resonance of the attacks on their congressional buildings in 2021 and 2023 underscores how these spaces are widely perceived as architectural embodiments of democracy itself. Both projects stand as two of the most ambitious experiments in civic architecture, yet resisting simplification: U.S. neoclassicism defies canonization, while projects like Brasília or Chandigarh are at the center of a modernist civic identity—even though beyond Europe and despite early modernism’s resistance to the notion of character.

Beyond theoretical positions—whether prioritizing spatial relations over symbolic expression, critiquing or defending a canon, or approaching architecture as a cultural, technical, or artistic practice—we continue to recognize civic character and differentiate the ideological frameworks that shape it. Today, as many political leaders drift away from the liberal democratic values while holding onto defined architectural visions (though not necessarily realized), the relevance of civic character resurfaces with urgency. Can architecture still aspire to public meaning without civic ambition?

While initiatives like the Green New Deal in the U.S. and the New European Bauhaus in Europe have captured attention producing a renewed interest on public architecture, they have failed to produce a tangible architectural agenda. In contrast, Latin America continues to face a pressing demand for public buildings and infrastructure, opening a fertile ground for rethinking what civic architecture can and should be today.

Materia Arquitectura 29 invites contributions that critically interrogate civicness in the contemporary built environment. We welcome submissions that explore its historical transformations, symbolic tensions, political potentials, and imagining its possible futures across different geopolitical contexts. We are particularly open to contributions that employ emerging methodologies, archival research, or critical case studies. Submissions may address built projects, unbuilt visions, or broader frameworks of public architecture—especially in contexts of crisis, institutional change and emerging political prospect.

No. 27 (2024): Materia Arquitectura 27 (Diciembre/December 2024)

CONSUMABLE CITIES
Guest editor LILIANA DE SIMONE
Materia Arquitectura 27 explores the intersections between the global processes of production, distribution and consumption, and their repercussions in urban and non-urban territories. In this framework, JOEL STILLERMAN examines the role of consumption as a tool of identity and citizenship construction, from a detailed study of Chilean middle classes. Furthermore, CELESTE OLALQUIAGA explores the history of Helicoide in Caracas, an infrastructure built for consumption that today works as a torture center. CLAUDIO CUNEO studies the extractive processes related to the rubber and oil industry that shaped the city of Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon. Also from the study of a non-urban territory, EDUARDO CORALES addresses the ecological and social consequences of the Rapel reservoir, conceived to feed the consumption of Chile's greatest cities. From another perspective, STELLA SCHROEDER and her team compare the tensions between informal commerce, the use of public space, and social inclusion in three cities in Latin America. In his article, GONZALO CARRASCO explains the origin of the notion of metabolism in the 19th century and its application in the study of cities to convert ecosystems into inventories susceptible of being consumed by cities. DIEGO MORERA examines the phenomenon of the virtualization of commerce by documenting ghost kitchens in Montevideo that operate for a delivery platform. Considering China’s emergence as a global economic power, RENZO MARSINO reflects on the modalities of shanzai related to the production of cities and buildings. THAD RUSSELL and LYNNETTE WIDDER present the facilities of a soil reuse plant in New York and its fundamental role in the economic chain of the real estate and construction business. Finally, SEBASTIÁN MEJÍA and CONSTANZA FREDES point out the complex relationship between nature and urbanization in the Mapocho’s riverbed in Santiago, through the by-products of considering water as a commodity.

Published: 2024-12-28

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