OA2025 OPEN CALL — Conference, Panel and Exhibition

CONCEPT

On Architecture — Crosscutting and Fusion of Disciplines is based on the concept of an interdisciplinary, international, multi-location conference, with two exhibitions and a panel.

OA2025 would bring together partner institutions, representatives from both academia and industry, from different parts of the world, working together on organization and realization of the event. The motivation of holding a multiplaces conference, in several places at the same time, is the knowledge exchange, dissemination of research results and possible interaction and implementation aimed at stakeholders and sponsors. This is why the principle of networking is key.

Another principle of interdisciplinarity underlines the complexity and multiplicity of architecture, as well as the new challenges facing architects, urban designers, and artists. An interdisciplinary approach is the basis for defining thematic blocks/topics which include the essential approaches to the subject  of architecture, innovative projects that impose new approaches and challenges, such as innovations in building materials, design and technology, which contribute to new aesthetics and a different understanding of functionalism, as well as architecture whose backbone is always creativity and art.

THEME

The themes will be discussed through various disciplinary lenses, including new aesthetics and functionalism, globalization, design methods and approaches, innovative materiality, technology, and new media.

Themes of the Conference and Exhibition are promoting quality design in different scale, which improves the life of resident citizens and visitors, with attractive living places. Creation of quality design is important for individual living in architecture object as the micro scale of significance – as well as for the design in a wider macro scale, which emphasizes the advantages of a city and potentials for more attractive business, qualified manpower, attraction of students, tourist potential, and events of wider significance. It is what makes an exciting, vibrant city that offers knowledge about new trends in art, architecture and urban design.
We are experiencing an unprecedented era in the history of urbanization. Some of the defining challenges of the 21st century dictate the pace of urban growth, create new approaches in architecture, increase the quality of living spaces, and control the environmental quality. At the same time, they also present an opportunity to create living spaces that are smarter, more efficient, more sustainable, more equal and safer. Architecture and urban Design in the small are the key for improvement and quality of urban and living space.
One of the topics is innovation and creativity in the digital era, with focus on art, architecture, technology, and science as being among the leading proponents of innovative change. Innovation is not new, nor a privilege of the digital age. It has always been present in human endeavors to solve problems, organize community better, improve the quality of life, work more efficiently, and so on. The digital age, however, has brought about unprecedented and ubiquitous possibilities of innovation in all spheres of life. In the digital age, perhaps more than ever before, there is growing need for multi-disciplinary approach in the research on Arts, Architecture, Design, Science and Technology to deal with challenges of modern society.
In the same sense, using the advantages and possibilities of the digital age and the technological range, a new architecture of the future is created, such as the use of a parametric design, or developing new sustainable technological solutions from the idea to the realization including maintenance in architecture, engineering and construction.
The new methodological approach is also focused on pioneering research on interactive graphic design at the time of unprecedented data abundance, such as research designer programs that redefine the production tool, applicable for further development of other designer participants as open source. Or other methodological approaches that explore drawing as a tool, in different ways, or mapping the space or processing data diagrams.
Methodological approaches in the digital era are using new tools, for example gamification in town planning. As a methodology it is not new since in the past, games were typically used for simulating cities in a safe environment. Today, modern game theories suggest a more integrated relationship between games and real life. The essence of the new generation of games is interactive design and consumer decision-making between users, based on their behavior, and decision-makers in a complex planning process. A platform for decision-making is formed through solving real problems and real-life challenges.
Modeling the Future combines analogue and digital modeling technologies to create a realistic, live-time mapping tools. A database of information on the cities architecture and public space which could become an invaluable tool for architecture and urban planning, even the basis that multiple disciplines (designers, architects, urban planners, artist) can work with in order to learn how to transform cities.

CONFERENCE
(international, peer-reviewed, open call)

THEMATIC BLOCKS

EXHIBITION
(international, juried with awards, open call)

3–17 December 2025
Gallery of Science and Technology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
Đure Jakšića 2, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Established in 2016, the MicroMacro awards are dedicated to the recognition of design solutions in innovative ways that successfully implement new standards in architecture and urban design and planning and encourage environmental sustainability.

Naming of the MicroMacro award refers to various scales of recognized projects and programs – from micro as furniture and object design, urban design, exhibition design, and interior architecture to macro as public art, urban planning, architecture, building information modeling and software architecture.

Who can enter
The competition is open to individuals and organizations in the fields of architecture, urban planning, design, history, technology, art, photography, new media art and to all geographical locations.

Who can submit a nomination
If you are an organization, an association, a not-for-profit or an individual you can nominate. You can self-nominate or nominate another organization.

Themes
International exhibition follows the Conference thematic blocks: Phenomenology of Architecture, Science & Technology and Architecture, Architecture and New Media approach, Showcase Presentations – new idea or project realization in Architecture, Urban Design or Art.,Vision of the City/Architecture –from capturing moments of city life towards utopias in a form of artistic drawing, design, photography, design product…

We kindly invite the perspective architects, town planners and artist to submit their projects, drawings, and photographs that respond to the scope of the above listed topics.

PANEL
(international, open call)

Interplay and Contradictions of Education, Research, and Production

We aim to reveal common occurrences and tendencies of the contemporary interdisciplinary setting, academic and professional, within the dominant system in education (market) production, in which many of us play a part. How does a particular actor perceive their role and these relationships, and is there a way to transcend the string of circumstances and imagine what may be possible instead?

The ambition is to offer possible interpretations of production in tertiary education and, to some extent, in academic research. With this comes the individual actor and their systemic social tendencies, the relations of apparent freedoms contracted in wages and fees in contrast to the captivity of precarious independence.

The individual’s capacity and motives to partake in the production processes in different contexts may yield different structural dynamics, although the assumption is that modern social conditions do not cater to such systemic varieties and that if any truly diversified outputs of the education-industry (market) supply chain exist — it is a glitch.

One of the main points to consider is to challenge this assumption to see if the speculation stands ground at all, and with that, if we care for liberatory perspectives in education, presuming emancipation from the dominant system is attractive. If diverse outputs do occur in practice, no matter how rarely, then there may be some value in detecting and investigating them in unison to explore structural similarities that can potentially inform new theories.

A consequential objective is to assess the concepts of production glitches as material deviations from educational conventions, be it as incidental or intentional actions. Whether one sabotages the mundane conditions of one’s daily work or (alongside it) tries to implement new strategies, hoping for a paradigm shift, it is about the deviations as realities of practice leading to new awareness.

What we hope to achieve is a pluralistic pool of contributions — ideas, concepts, opinions, and peculiar first-hand experiences contextual to the role of observers and direct actors in education production.


Contribution guidelines and timeline
To participate in the panel and be considered for publication in an edited volume, please submit a 300-word proposal for a critical opinion essay of approx. 2,000–3,000 words. The essays will prompt the format of the panel discussion and its specific objectives.


Convener: Dr Aleksa Bijelovic, Senior Lecturer, Associate Head of School, the School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Western Australia

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