CfP: MATERIA ARQUITECTURA N°30 – BEYOND OCCUPANTS
Guest editors: Antonio Cantero & Stefano Corbo
Submission deadline: April 27, 2026.
Materia Arquitectura 30 invites us to explore how human, non-human and post-human patterns of occupation shape the more-than-human conditions in which architecture operates. In an era marked by social and geopolitical inequalities, health and climate crises, and rapid biotechnological and medical advances, the discipline is increasingly confronted with forms of agency, vulnerability, and interdependence that exceed the human individual. Rather than approaching these conditions as external challenges, this issue proposes examining them as forces already transforming architectural practices, spatial organizations, and design protocols.
The term “occupant” refers to a broad and heterogeneous plurality that includes groups and individuals with diverse abilities and experiences of exclusion—linked to ethnicity, race, migration, gender, and other dimensions of identity—as well as microbiomes, non-human organisms (plants, animals, microbes), probiotic ecosystems, adaptive infrastructures, and technological entities, ranging from artificial intelligences to automated systems and digitally augmented beings. This expanded definition acknowledges the interdependence between life forms and technologies that coexist and actively participate in shaping the built environment.
Traditional disciplinary narratives have often overlooked the diversity of occupants, either by oversimplifying their role in the production of space or by disregarding non-human and technological agencies in favor of anthropocentric approaches that reinforce human exceptionalism and extractivist practices. As a result, architecture is often conceived as a stable container for predefined users, rather than as a dynamic field of relations and processes of occupation.
Against this backdrop, Materia Arquitectura 30 understands occupation as an active process that extends from domestic and care environments to logistical infrastructures, data-driven spaces, conservation landscapes, and immersive digital environments. Architecture is thus shaped by encounters among heterogeneous forms of life, matter, and technology, which blur conventional distinctions between users, environments, and technical systems, and call for new spatial, material, and organizational responses.
In response to the persistent gap between designing for occupants and designing with them, Materia Arquitectura 30 proposes to reconsider ways of occupation in contemporary spaces. By placing diverse occupants—rather than exclusively human needs—at the core of the design process, the issue explores how architecture can operate through uncertainty, interdependence, and emerging forms of spatial coexistence. How do different modes of occupation affect architectural design? How can design strategies articulate ecologies of companionship among human, non-human, and post-human agents? How can architecture respond to the unforeseen that arises from encounters among multispecies identities?
By opening a trans- and interdisciplinary dialogue, Materia Arquitectura 30 invites critical and experimental contributions that investigate how architectural designs, methodologies, speculative approaches, and theories can address the complex relationship between space and occupation. Topics may include pre- and post-occupancy assessment, multispecies cohabitation, adaptive reuse, data-driven design, healthy living environments, and the ethical responsibilities of architecture as informed by its occupants, among others. Proposals may be articles, critics or visual essays—maps, drawings, and diagrams.
For more information on how to submit, see https://www.materiaarquitectura.com/index.php/MA.