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This new periodical is to be published twice a year by the Department of Architecture Theory, RWTH Aachen University. Not unlike Voltaire’s fictional character Candide, who travelled the 18th century world on an eager but often disappointed search for knowledge, the journal’s editors have embarked on a 21st  century search, in their case, of architectural knowledge.

This is the  first issue of Candide.

Intent

The key questions that Candide wishes to address are: How is architectural knowledge generated, collected, presented and passed on? Which forms of knowledge specific to architecture 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 organisations are involved? Which techniques, tools and methods are instrumental? Candide’s editors are not suggesting that architecture is, per se, a scientific endeavor. Such aposition would only lead to well-known and unsolvable disciplinary debates. It is undeniable, however, that the discipline of architecture involves specific forms of knowledge and that these are continuously expanding. It is equally undeniable that creative processes, such as the design of buildings, both require and generate knowledge. The knowledge which the editors wish to publish and expand on in Candide involves the full spectrum of knowledge specific to architecture, including observation-based knowledge, typically generated by social scientists,and practice-based knowledge typical of designers involved in the conception and production of architecture.

As a journal dedicated to exploring the culture of knowledge specific to architecture, Candide also aims to further the knowledge of interactions, conflicts and consensus-building related to architecture. The editors therefore recommend the study and analysis of those buildings at the center of public interest: those that stimulate controversy, offer matter for thought, act as landmarks, reinforce tradition, attempt to revolutionise, establish habits. As “symbolic forms”,architectural works are strongly related to social, linguistic and media processes. Candide specifically invites authors to investigate these processes.