3rd International Architectural Studies Conference

Sacred Spaces: Building Identities, Sharing Heritage

3rd International Architectural Studies Conference
9–10 September 2027 | Porto, Portugal | Hybrid

The Department of Architecture at Yeditepe University and Centro de Estudos Nuno Portas at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, invite contributions to the 3rd International Architectural Studies Conference, Sacred Spaces: Building Identities, Sharing Heritage, taking place in Porto on 9-10 September 2027 in a hybrid format.

Sacred spaces extend beyond religious institutions and established heritage practices. Rather than being inherent or timeless qualities of particular places, sacredness emerges through relationships between bodies, rituals, memories, communities, materials, and territories. These relationships are historically situated and politically contested. Sacred spaces may preserve cultural memory and collective identities, but they may also legitimize territorial claims, reinforce institutional authority, or become entangled with economic and technological agendas.

Architecture plays a distinctive role in producing, experiencing, representing, and transforming sacredness. Through spatial organization, construction, light, landscape, thresholds, and atmosphere, architectural practices give form to cultural meanings while negotiating changing social and political conditions. Urbanization, ecological crises, migration, geopolitical conflict, and digitalization further challenge how sacred spaces emerge, persist, and disappear.

The conference welcomes historical, theoretical, critical, and design-based research across three complementary tracks:

Foundations explores the constitution of sacred space through cosmology, ritual, embodiment, materiality, vernacular practices, and sacred landscapes.

Positions examines the political production and contestation of sacred space, including territorial conflict, institutional power, post-secular urbanism, gender, race, and architectural intervention.

Words considers the representation and interpretation of sacredness through architectural language, drawing, mapping, symbolism, narratives, memory, media, and digital environments.

Together, the tracks invite interdisciplinary dialogue on sacred space as an active field of architectural, urban, and cultural inquiry.

Call for Papers (CFP) - 7 October 2026

Abstracts due - 7 December 2026

Notification of acceptance - 25 January 2027

Full papers due - 25 March 2027

Notification of acceptance - 30 May 2027

Final papers for presentation due - 5 July 2027

Conference     9-10 September 2027, Porto

For more information: https://foundationspositionswords.com