_{CALL FOR PAPERS}

_{MATERIA ARQUITECTURA N°28:}  

PRESS PLAY

Guest editors: PAREID (Déborah Lopez + Hadin Charbel)

More info: PDF

Publication date: August 2025.

Submission deadline: May 5, 2025

The increasing use of interactive media in architecture has radically transformed how we conceive of and experience both the subjects and the scales of design. The traditional approach of working with isolated, static objects—whether at the scale of a room, building, or master plan—has evolved into a more dynamic framework, where relationships between elements can actively influence one another over time. 

The integration of videogame engines has introduced new ways of being and experimenting— through acts of simulation, enabling multiple players to participate in decision making, and even extending perspectives beyond the human to the non-human. Similarly, film, augmented and mixed reality, and virtual environments have opened up new possibilities for spatial storytelling, interaction dynamics, learning, and the dissemination of architectural knowledge. Today, one can ‘press play’ with architecture. 

While these tools offer seemingly endless potential, they are constrained by their own limitations, both in hardware and software. The catalog of pre-built assets, for instance, often reinforces homogenized aesthetics, character representations, and narrative structures. Moreover, despite their perceived seamlessness and immateriality, digital environments rely on continuous energy consumption and connectivity

This issue of Materia Arquitectura seeks to explore the role of design in digital environments within an era of both scarcity and excess, placelessness and embeddedness, human and non-human agency—through the lens of interactive media. It asks: What are the implications of environmental storytelling? What are the limits and possibilities of participatory digital design? How do current economic structures shape these environments?  How can emerging technologies be used without reinforcing technocratic paradigms? What new pedagogical models emerge through these new media? What are the effects of interactive media beyond the medium itself? How are heritage and preservation redefined in virtual environments? Can virtual spaces be considered “legitimate” when the physical disappears?  Does the virtual decay?

Materia Arquitectura invites researchers, designers, and scholars to contribute articles that critically examine the effects, limitations, and promises of these media as we navigate the intersection of digital immersion, environmental responsibility, and architectural innovation. We welcome theoretical, historical, and practice-based contributions that interrogate how interactive media reshape architectural thought, production, and experience—inviting reflections on both their transformative potential and inherent contradictions.