About the Journal
Studi e ricerche di storia dell’architettura is the open-access journal of the Associazione Italiana di Storia dell’Architettura (Aistarch). Founded in 2017, SRSA publishes biannual issues, it is indexed in ERIH PLUS and recognized as a “Classe A” journal by ANVUR. Official languages are Italian and English, but in exceptional cases we also accept papers written in other major European languages.
SRSA welcomes contributions that deal with the history of architecture in the broadest terms, without chronological or geographical limitations. We are looking for essays dedicated to projects and processes of construction – but also of use, reuse, and transformation – of spaces, buildings, and entire urban complexes, whether made of stone or paper, real or merely imagined, as long as they are investigated in their historical dimension, with critical awareness and concern for the peculiarities of each context. Case studies are welcome, especially if aimed at discussing methodological or historiographical issues, in a perspective open to comparison and cross-disciplinary exchange. Priority will be given to manuscripts marked by originality, a problem-oriented approach and that offer food for thought that goes beyond academic boundaries and raises questions that challenge us not only as researchers but also, and above all, as citizens of the world.
Current Issue
Architecture is a collaborative activity. A poet only needs pen and paper to compose a poem (Homer did not even have those), while Giotto only needed a chipped stone to show Cimabue his ingenuity. The situation is different for someone who has to construct a building: ideas and savoir-faire are not enough; they also need a lot of hands, a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of skills… a lot of contributions from a lot of different people. Of many of these we will never know the name, nor the specific role; of many of those we will never be able to grasp all the efforts, the nuances, the implications. However, it is probably not (only) because of their elusive nature that collaborative practices have been, and often still continue to be, rather underexplored by historiography. Doesn’t their opacity somewhat obscure the image of the architect as deus ex machina of construction projects, that for centuries in Europe architecture practitioners have sought to propagate?
