call for papers diségno No. 20 – Drawing the City
Drawing the City
edited by Paolo Giandebiaggi, Sandra Mikolajewska, Karsten Ley
In the age of complexity, the city represents the principal setting for human settlement and the development of social relations. Among all human creations, it may be considered the most complex invention ever created: a dynamic, stratified organism in which physical, environmental, and infrastructural components converge with economic, social, and behavioural dynamics.
Within this context, representation, in its cognitive, interpretative, and communicative dimensions, plays a central role in understanding such complexity. Through the use of different scales of representation, symbolic codes, signs, and graphic syntheses, Drawing can convey not only the morphological and spatial dimensions of the city but also the environmental, social, relational, and perceptual components that define its identity. The representation of the city, therefore, cannot be limited to describing the physical form of the built environment; it also extends to communicating the tangible and intangible values that shape it. Drawing thus emerges as a critical device capable of connecting description, interpretation, and design prefiguration. From this perspective, graphic language remains one of the principal tools through which humankind has historically observed, understood, and interpreted reality: from the earliest forms of cartography and territorial representation to contemporary visual communication systems, digital interfaces, and advanced information systems. Drawing continues to be one of the most effective, accessible, and universally intelligible tools for interpreting contemporary phenomena.
The call for papers for issue no. 20/2027 of the journal diségno aims to explore the role of representation in reading, analysing, and transforming the city. It invites theoretical, methodological, and practice-based contributions that investigate Drawing as a critical tool for interpreting the relationships that shape urban space. Within this context, immersive technologies, digital environments, advanced information systems, interactive platforms, and artificial intelligence are expanding the possibilities of representation and redefining the ways in which urban phenomena are observed, interpreted, and communicated.
- Focus 1. Reading the City
Understanding the city requires practices of observation, survey, and representation capable of interpreting its physical, environmental, and relational complexity. Through analogue and digital tools, Drawing is not limited to the geometric representation of urban space but also contributes to developing an understanding of existing settlement systems, their historical layers, and the dynamics that characterise them. From this perspective, urban survey, in particular, constitutes an interpretative tool capable of revealing relationships and transformations across different scales, from small urban settlements to large metropolitan areas. - Focus 2. Analysing the City
The complexity of the city requires representation tools capable of interpreting the relationships, critical issues, and transformations that characterise urban space. Within this context, Drawing functions as an analytical tool through which the heterogeneous information gathered during the reading phase can be organised, correlated, and visualised. It contributes to the construction of interpretative models of urban reality that can inform the subsequent definition of strategies and actions. Different methodologies make it possible to produce a synchronic representation of complex phenomena, supporting analytical and diagnostic processes through interpretative syntheses and predictive scenarios. - Focus 3. Designing the City
Representation also plays a central role in the processes of designing and transforming the urban space under investigation, supporting the assessment of alternative proposals and the selection of implementation strategies for the development of future scenarios. From the neighbourhood scale to that of broader urban systems, Drawing makes it possible to interpret spatial relationships, environmental conditions, social dynamics, and patterns of urban use, while clearly expressing the design intentions. From this perspective, Drawing represents a key critical and design language capable of guiding processes of regeneration, inclusion, and transformation in the contemporary city.
Full paper submission: January 15th, 2027
Notification of final acceptance: February 15th, 2027
Revised full paper in the author’s native language and in English: March 15th, 2027
Issue publication: June 30th, 2027
Issue Editors
Paolo Giandebiaggi, Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma
Full Professor, CEAR-10/A-Drawing.
Architectural and urban survey, representation of built environment, urban transformation analysis, adaptive reuse and regeneration, digital documentation of cultural heritage.
Giandebiaggi, P., Pagnotta, F. (2020). Architettura religiosa e forma urbis dopo la città romana. Una ricerca su Parma. In S. Voce (a cura di), La città e le sue metamorfosi. Atti del Convegno, Parma 7 maggio 2019, Collana «Philohumanistica», pp. 69-75. Bologna: Pàtron.
Sandra Mikolajewska, Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma
Assistant Professor (RtdA), CEAR-10/A-Disegno.
Integrated digital survey, 3D modeling, digital documentation of cultural heritage, video mapping, Building Information Modeling.
Mikolajewska, S., Zerbi, A. (2020). I progetti di riqualificazione di Parma tra Ottocento e Novecento. In M. Becchetti, P. Giandebiaggi (a cura di), I “Capannoni” a Parma. Storie di persone e di città, pp. 10-31. Parma: MUP Editore.
Karsten Ley, Department of Building Sciences, hochschule 21 - Buxtehude University of Applied Sciences (Germany)
Head of the School of Architecture and Professor of Urbanism, Architectural Theory and Design.
Urban and architectural design, urban and architectural theory, urban and architectural history, cultural heritage preservation, cultural heritage management.
Ley, K. (2025). Urban Morphology: The Significance of Urban Space History. In Land, n. 14(4), 683. DOI: 10.3390/land14040683.
