archiDOCT 17 | Data-ii

The second part of the 17th issue of ArchiDOCT 'DATA - ii" invited academics, researchers, and PhD students, that could relate their doctoral thesis as solo authors, with their supervisor(s) or with fellow doctoral students or doctoral holders to deliver an essay focusing on any field related to the entanglement within architecture, cities, and data to define a new epistemological horizon for architecture. The aim was to explore the theme of ‘data’ in the design process through both a theoretical or practice-based approach and highlight the breadth and scope of the results their possible implementation could bring about. For this reason, and considering the breadth of possibilities contained in the topic itself, we were interested in contributions that approached the topic in the human and non-human actualization of it, and we invited discussion concerning tangible examples of their implications either for applied design strategies or for research purposes, with the main aim to ‘in-form’ the debate regarding data with a new and lateral perspective that could clarify, and hopefully unite, the inner structural dichotomies such ‘structural vs. functional’, ‘symbolic vs. subjective’, ‘quantity vs. quality’. In the history of archiDOCT, data is the first topic that is taking up two volumes, a proof of the appeal of data as an extraordinary topic. This is a further confirmation of our speculations that the doctoral research oriented towards the world of data is paramount and seeks more fora to broadcast its several variants.