From Participatory Design to Transformative Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will delineate, explore, and advance the capacity of participatory design to foster and reinforce spatialized transformative resilience. By critically reexamining and expanding the boundaries of participatory design, the Special Issue seeks to move beyond conventional frameworks, positioning transformative resilience, underpinned by participatory design, as a vital approach to addressing complex and evolving architectural and urban challenges. Transformative resilience is not merely endurance, it advances an agency open to ongoing evolution in response to challenges. This dynamic nature justifies referring here to “acts” of transformative resilience, reflected in initiatives such as climate adaptation, post-disaster or post-conflict reconstruction, and economic regeneration, all of which are increasingly imperative in the face of emergent and impending existential challenges. A diverse range of methods and tools is needed to ensure the sustainability of communities and places. Moving beyond laudable but well-discussed examples of participatory design addressing immediate needs and aspirations, this Special Issue will focus on three key forward-looking approaches in the context of (emergent/future) change:

-Enabling establishes a foundational base for transformative resilience by building academic, community, and/or public/private sector capacities, fostering decision-making structures and cultivating knowledge exchange. These enabling conditions can give rise to enacted practices.

-Enacting through the initial planning, implementation, and/or management of assets (i.e., buildings, infrastructure, landscapes, and places) and agencies (including cultural, economic, environmental, political, and/or social programs). Critical here is not just the role of conventional buildings, places, and activities, but equally the possibility of transformative resilience activated thorough design prototypes, spatial interventions, or experimental projects. While complete in their own right, such small-scale or pilot efforts allow architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and others to test ideas, engage communities, and adapt designs in real-world contexts, acting as a catalyst for full-scale implementation.

-Envisioning future possibilities for participatory design and transformative resilience, drawing insights from alternative discourses including anthropology, the arts, business, geography, history, law, medicine, and/or the sciences. This visionary outlook can build upon enacted experiences to inform long-term strategies and build resilient futures.

While we welcome all discussions, we value hearing voices from the Global South, voices that carry globally relevant insights and lessons in enabling, enacting, and envisioning resilient communities and places for both now and for future generations.

Note: In line with our efforts to include more diverse voices in academic research and encouraging equitable access to publishing opportunities, fee waivers or reductions will be considered for authors based on three factors: quality, originality, and the relevance of the submitted work (as determined by the standard peer-review process); prior research activity; and economic need.

Prof. Robert Brown
Dr. Camelia May Li Kusumo
Dr. Hiba Mohsen
Dr. Nancy Abdel-Moneim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Architecture is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• change
• dialogic
• enabling
• enacting
• envisioning
• participatory design
• transformative resilience