About
Candide is dedicated to exploring the culture of knowledge specific to architecture.
How is architectural knowledge generated, collected, presented, and passed on? Which forms of architectural knowledge can be observed? How can knowledge generated in reference to a specific task be applied to other contexts? Which experts, designers, and users, which institutions and organizations are involved? Which techniques, tools, and methods are instrumental?
Each issue of Candide is made up of five distinct sections. This framework responds to the diversity of architectural knowledge being produced, while challenging authors of all disciplines to test a variety of genres to write about and represent architecture. Contributions to these sections may be submitted at any time. Please visit Submit for further details.
Candide. Journal for Architectural Knowledge was founded in 2009 by Axel Sowa and Susanne Schindler. Based at the Chair for Architecture Theory at RWTH Aachen University, it has since involved various editors— Andres Lepik, Anne Kockelkorn, and Lutz Robbers—as well as different designers—Katja Gretzinger (1–5), Benjamin Critton (6–10) and Adriaan Mellegers (11–12). Candide is indexed by the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, IBZ, and the RIBA Periodicals Index.
Essay — provides a forum for discourse on architectural knowledge. The editors are interested in publishing both fundamental research into and speculative arguments on the nature of knowledge, coming from philosophical, historic, or anthropological perspectives.
Analysis — allows for in-depth examinations of built architecture. The editors are interested in demonstrations of how knowledge that was invested and is embodied in buildings can be extracted retrospectively. How can the detailed reading of existing structures promote the creative re-use of existing knowledge?
Project — is directed primarily at architects who both practice and theoretically reflect on their work. Moving beyond the constraints of context, clients and the task at hand: How can a specific design project become a model of thought, an example to be emulated? How can a project reorganize available knowledge or expand on it?
Encounters — gives access to the personal knowledge of renowned, unjustly forgotten, or entirely unknown protagonists of architecture. Accordingly, the section provides ample space for interviews, dialogues, and testimonies.
Fiction — reflects the editors’ conviction that stories often tell us more about architecture than scientific explanations. The editors are interested in fables, aphorisms, utopias, comic strips, or photographic novels that expand the formal spectrum used to generate and present architectural knowledge. Reflections on the relationship of fiction and architecture will also be considered.