Open Call for Sophia Journal Vol. 11, No. 1: Landscapes of Repair - The Invisible City: Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair.

Sophia Journal is an academic, open access, peer-reviewed journal, published by the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU) - Research group Architecture, Art, and Image (AAI) at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Portugal (FAUP), in collaboration with the association Cityscopio and their publishing imprint scopio Editions.

Guest Editors: Cristina Gastón (ETSAB-UPC), Hugh Campbell (UCD)
Editors: Ana Miriam Rebelo (FAUP), Maria Neto (FAUP), Raquel Paulino (FAUP)

Fourth thematic cycle "Landscapes of Repair":
Sophia Journal is currently accepting submissions for its fourth thematic cycle, "Landscapes of Repair", encouraging a humanist approach to urban transformation that transcends purely economic considerations. By exploring the impactful realms of photography, film, and various visual practices, we aim to highlight their significant contributions to the discourse surrounding architectural and spatial production. Our goal is to draw urgent attention to the necessity of repairing our fractured planet. In doing so, we seek to address and connect the multitude of challenges that contemporary cities and territories across the world are facing. These visual mediums not only document but also critically engage with the diverse and complex issues of our time, offering unique perspectives on urban and environmental crises. Through this lens, we hope to foster deeper understanding and inspire reparative forms of coexistence.

Framework of "The Invisible City – Manplan and Contemporary Forms of Repair":
More than fifty years after The Architectural Review launched the Manplan series (1969-70), many of the questions it posed remain urgently relevant. Created during a time of profound disillusionment with the failures of post-war architectural modernity, Manplan aimed to expose the gap between design intentions and lived reality. It challenged architects, planners, and the public to confront the social and political consequences of spatial decision-making in this way. Its programme was daring, controversial, constructive and rooted in the belief that architecture must be accountable to basic human needs. Photography and visual practices can act as potent tools for revealing systemic failures, inequalities, and possibilities for change.

In its radically human-centred visual strategy, Manplan abandoned the conventions of pristine architectural photography, replacing them with grainy, immersive images drawn from photojournalism. These photographs did not just focus on the buildings, but on the people and how they inhabited and lived in city spaces, making them the main subjects of the pictures.

The Manplan photography series revealed a powerful sense of proximity to the city. A necessity to make visible what had seemed invisible before, communicating the disconnection between planning ideals and lived conditions, and highlighting the social consequences of urban neglect. Many of these worries echo powerfully today, in a moment marked by climate crisis, social precarity, infrastructural decay, and an accelerating technosphere that weighs upon cities both materially and symbolically.

"Manplan and the Landscapes of Repair":
Within the broader Landscapes of Repair cycle, Sophia Journal Vol. 11 No. 1 builds on this legacy by asking:
How can visual and spatial practices once again confront the invisible pressures shaping contemporary cities, and how might they contribute to acts of repair—material, social, ecological—capable of lightening their weight?

Just as the 1969-70 series captured Britain at a moment of social fragility and political transition, we ask how contemporary visual practices can reveal the fractures, burdens, and possibilities that define the “invisible city” of the Anthropocene.

With the technosphere now estimated at approximately 30 trillion tonnes—an aggregate mass that rivals the biosphere – urban environments are weighed down not only by concrete, steel, and carbon emissions but also by less visible intensities: administrative inertia, social exhaustion, ecological loss, and affective forms of displacement. Repair, in this context, becomes an ethical and imaginative task, one that calls for new forms of witnessing, attention, and representation.

Call for Papers and Visual Essays:
In this call for papers and visual essays for Sophia Journal Vol. 11 No. 1, we invite submissions that revisit, expand, or challenge the critical spirit of Manplan by exploring how visual and spatial practices - particularly through the lenses of photography, film, and architecture - can act as instruments of care, exposure, and repair. Contributions may examine unstable territories, critically revisit urban archives, or propose actions that seek to repair the imperceptible scars of contemporary cities and landscapes.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Revisiting Manplan: contemporary re-readings of the series and its relevance to contemporary city problems
- Visualising the invisible city: photographic and filmic strategies for making visible social, ecological, or infrastructural forms of neglect
- Landscapes of care: practices of maintenance, repair, cohabitation, and socio-ecological oversight
- The politics of representation: how image-making shapes public understanding of urban unfairnesses and possibilities for change
- Urban weight and urban lightness: responses to the material and immaterial burdens of the technosphere
- Human and more-than-human cohabitation: visual narratives of interdependence, vulnerability, and resilience spaces and interactions
- Spectral architectures: capturing the atmospheres, absences and ruins of contemporary urban life
- Speculative repair: creative proposals that confront contemporary dysfunctions and envision an alternative future
- Visual and spatial narratives: envisioning ecological and social repair in urban and rural contexts
- Critical frameworks: critical visual narratives addressing diverse problems across cultures and disciplines

We welcome submissions from scholars, artists, architects, practitioners, activists, and transdisciplinary researchers who explore these questions through theoretical essays, visual essays, documentary projects, experimental formats, or hybrid research practices.

Towards a Reparative Visual Praxis:
By revisiting Manplan's ethos – its attention to lived reality, its refusal of aesthetic sanitisation, and its commitment to social critique – this issue seeks to explore how contemporary visual practices can once again operate as catalysts for public reflection and collective responsibility. In an era when cities grow heavier –materially, symbolically, and ecologically – we ask how image-making can help lighten them: by exposing the unseen, attending to the overlooked, and participating in acts of repair.
We look forward to receiving contributions that illuminate, interrogate, or reimagine the landscapes of care shaping today's and tomorrow's cities.

Submission:
Login or Register to make a submission: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/user/register

Submission Preparation Checklist:
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
All submissions must meet the following requirements:
- Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
- The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
- The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
- Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
- The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Manuscript Submissions:
- Manuscripts for upcoming papers and articles are accepted and published in English.
- All authors should include their institutional affiliations and email addresses. One author should be identified as the corresponding author and full contact details including email, mailing address and telephone numbers should be provided.
- Text must avoid discriminatory language and inferences.
- Authors should carefully make sure that the manuscripts are in accordance with the instructions for authors. Manuscripts that do not pass the preliminary check based on these guidelines may be returned for corrections before being sent out for review.
 
Manuscript Preparation and Submission format:
The format of submissions will be of two types:

1. Theoretical papers: this format is admittedly theoretical and of critical reflection, is predominantly written and should have between 3000 to 6000 words (references not included);

2. Visual essays: this format is admittedly practical and is specifically addressed to authors using photography/ the image in their work as the main instrument of research, communication, design and artistic expression. It should have 6 to 8 pages and include a written section between 750 to 1500 words (references not included).

- All submissions should include title, abstract, 5 keywords, footnotes, reference list, images, and, when needed, tables and appendices.
- Manuscripts should contain an abstract of no more than 200 - 300 words, describing the purpose, the methods, and the general findings of the study. Following the abstract, manuscripts should include five keywords.
- All manuscript pages must single-spaced and typed in Helvetica, 12 point font size, with 3 cm for head margin and 2.5 cm for left and right hand margins and foot.
- References and quoting should follow the the Chicago Style Manual (page numbers for direct quotes).
- Quotations exceeding 40 words should be displayed indented in the text.
- Headings and sub-headings should be clearly distinguished.
- Explanatory footnotes should be avoided whenever its contents can be included in the main text.
- To support of manuscript preparation, use the Word template.

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact our editorial assistants: info.sophiajournalarq.up.pt
 
Anonymisation:
The author(s) should send two separate files, one with the author(s) details, and one without. The author(s) must ensure that the initial submission is anonymised, by removing any identifying information, including authors’ name(s), institutional affiliation, acknowledgements, grants awarded, self-citations, etc. In text, this information can be replaced by substituting words: for example, "[reference removed to maintain the integrity of the review process]". Self-citations should appear at the top of the reference list as "Author citation" with the publication year.
All identifying information will be added later to the text after the peer-review process.
 
References:
- Authors should use the Chicago Style Manual as a guide for preparing the reference section;
- Authors should adopt either Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (full note) or Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (note).
- Publication information for each reference must be complete and correct.
- Ultimate Citation Reference
 
Copyright Clearance:
You are responsible for knowing if the chosen materials to include in your article may require copyright clearance or permissions, if so, you must provide the document that certifies that you’ve been granted permission for publishing said material.
 
Sophia Journal does not charge fees for publishing an article.

Copyright Notice:
Copyright on the articles and visual essays published in Sophia is held by their Author(s). In order to publish in Sophia, Authors agree to license their work under a CC BY NC-ND 4.0 International license, granting usage rights. Please refer to our Open Access Policy and Licensing Terms section: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/OpenAccess
Furthermore, Authors agree to grant Sophia Journal and scopio Editions rights of first publication, allowing these to identify themselves as the original publisher. Authors also grant Sophia Journal and scopio Editions non-exclusive commercial rights to produce hardcopy volumes of Sophia for sale to libraries and individuals.

Privacy Statement:
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Abstract deadline: January 31, 2026

Selected authors will be notified by February 28, 2026
Manuscript deadline (Conference): May 1, 2026

Conference (dtbc): June 26, 2026

Manuscript deadline (Journal): October 1, 2026
Publication date (tbc): by December 2026