The research project Mapping Architectural criticism, 20^th and 21^st Centuries: a Cartography, funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, aims at developing a field of research on architectural criticism and its history, from the very last decades of the 19^th century to the present day. It is based on an international network of scholars, whose research involves the history of architectural criticism on various levels and with different approaches (including architectural theory, history of preservation, the historiography of architecture, history of architectural periodicals and of criticism). Nathalie Boulouch (Université Rennes 2 and Archives de la critique d’art), Anne Hultzsch (University College London, The Bartlett School of Architecture and OCCAS-Oslo Center for Critical Architectural Studies), Giovanni Leoni (Università di Bologna) Paolo Scrivano (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University), Laurent Stalder (ETH Zurich), Suzanne Stephens (Barnard College, Columbia University), Alice Thomine-Berrada (Musée d’Orsay) are the main members of this network, which is hosted at Rennes 2 University and directed by Hélène Jannière (Université Rennes 2).

The Site of Discourse intends to identify, analyze, debate and reflect on the editorial culture of the Portuguese architectural periodicals over the 20^thcentury. The title of the project — The Site of Discourse — has a number of different meanings. First and foremost, it invokes an idea that belongs to architecture itself. The title suggests that this project is about the discourse as well as about the “place” on which such discourse is produced — the architectural reviews and journals. It also invokes a complex grid of configurations about “who” produces, “what” contents involves, and “how” such “site” is constructed. In fact, this project is grounded on the argument that specialized periodicals of architecture are more than a mere sequence of printed objects. As a totality they embody various discursive and crossed lines, which formed, over time, an editorial culture supported by a network of exchanges between the editors, critics, and architects.

By proposing a distinctive framework that expands the conventional treatments of this theme in Portuguese and international scientific context, this project will study how the editorial culture frames the architectural discourse with a critical reflection based on three focus of analysis: the formal and visual support; the agents and their social web; the discursive contents in its several dimensions — disciplinary, ideological, professional, esthetical, technical, theoretical.