Ardeth: A journal on the power of the project

Cover of Ardeth, #15, Fall 2024: large white stencil-style letters "AR DE TH" on a plain sand-beige background, with white italic vertical text "Guest-curated by M. Ramsgaard Thomsen, N. Miller, S. Dalager Nielsen". — Publisher's cover art

An Italian journal on design theory in architecture, published twice a year, in spring and autumn. It studies projects rather than buildings or architects, treating design hypotheses as claims that can be shown to be wrong, and publishes manuscripts, visual essays, commentaries and book reviews. It accepts work in Italian and English and uses double-blind peer review for both submitted and invited work.

Ardeth aims at opening up a space for design theory. A space for reflecting and discussing around an object that is in need of a redefinition, despite the fact that it informs all design practices. Often erroneously likened to the architect's poetics or worldview, design theory has its own theoretical foundation, which has been under discussion for centuries, and which needs to be further discussed in order to understand the power of design actions. Unlike the many journals that revolve around the architectural world, Ardeth concerns neither with outcomes (architecture) nor with the authors (architects). Ardeth concerns instead with their operational work, i.e. projects. The shift from subjects (their good intentions, as taught in Universities and reclaimed in the profession) to objects (the products of design, at work within the social system that contains them) engenders an analytical and falsifiable elaboration of the complex mechanisms that an open practice such as design involves. Through a process of disciplinary redefinition, Ardeth explores the falsifiability of design hypotheses as the object that allows the project to scientifically confront errors and approximations.