CA2RE Conference Hannover, 26.-28.03.2026
With Trajectories of design-driven and artistic research we aim to shed light on the intersection of research processes with spatial change.
Website Conference: https://ca2re.eu/events/hannover/
We are happy to invite for the CA²RE Conference hosted by Leibniz University Hannover. The event welcomes researchers and practitioners from diverse fields engaged in design-driven and artistic research to share and discuss their projects through intensive peer review and critical dialogue.
Trajectories, from the Latin trans–iacere (to throw across), refer to the move to further dimensions, thinking and creating beyond what first-hand appears and what is practiced, concerning the spin to transmit and transport understanding, knowing and practising. To discuss paths of research – as it moves – points at finding logics and coherence, for the course over time, seen as a curve, tracing in space and context, for cutting other curves, passing through a set of points, and identifying rules which steer the research process. With Trajectories of design-driven and artistic research we aim to shed light on the intersection of research processes with spatial change. How can spatial capacities and their transformation be grasped, related to theory and shown in research? In which way can material- or concept-based spatial interventions become a practical part of research? What role can the creation of space and projection of existing spaces towards the future play for research in architecture?
“To throw across” – Trajectories can be about the risk and adventure in design-driven and artistic research, to engage with uncertainties, to move to something new and unknown, towards emerging directions, to move from and to horizons of knowledge (Gadamer, 1990), getting aware of conditioning skills, practices and concepts and how they can be contested, reworked, and extended. Thus, finding “curved lines” driven by a spin, necessarily involves learning processes, trial and error, using also discarded lines to identify more complex lines of thought and practice. Tracking Trajectories, in this sense, is about how practices are followed, drawn, and documented, considering the legitimacy of more intuitive, drifting approaches (Krogh, Markussen, and Bang, 2015) and setting an equal focus on the research process and its outcome.Trajectories are simultaneously pointing forwards and backwards, for a prospective as well as a retroactive reflection.
“Lines of flight” – Trajectories can be, at the same time, about a performative view on space, its capacities, tendencies, and the agencies involved in its transformation – across architectural, urban, territorial, natural, interior, and more dimensions – to invent, experiment, and evolve pathways in understanding spatial change. Understanding Trajectories as part of assemblage thinking can respond to dynamic spatial as well as research contexts, and to social and material networks of people, things, and narratives. As Deleuze and Guattari (1980) point out, Trajectories are able to frame complexity through fluidity and connectivity, constantly shifting, evolving, and adapting – concerned with material forms and forms of expression, with territorialisation for ordering and creating space and context, and with coding/decoding (De Landa, 2016) to different languages and contexts of meaning.
Trajectories are taking up on the work of the CA2RE community on Strategies of Design-driven Research (Pedersen et al., 2021). Trajectories of research are about the persons imagining and forming them, their personal trajectories, and collaboration and interaction in new forms how to understand and organise research. To actively form, steer and adjust Trajectories of research processes, at different points, can enhance and promote specific characteristics of design-driven and artistic research.
De Landa, Manuel (2016): Assemblage theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix (1980): Mille Plateaux, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
Gadamer, Hans Georg (1990): Hermeneutik I. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Tübingen: Mohr.
Krogh, Peter Gall; Markussen, Thomas; and Anne Louise Bang (2015): ‘Ways of Drifting: 5 Methods of Experimentation in Research-through-Design’, in: Chakrabarti, Amaresh, ed.: ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries: Theory, Research Methodology, Aesthetics, Human Factors and Education, Vol. 1, 39–50, Bangalore: Springer Publishing Company.
Pedersen, Claus Peder; Zupančič, Tadeja; Schwai, Markus; Van Den Berghe, Jo; Lagrange Thierry, eds. (2021): Strategies of Design-driven Research. Aarhus: Aarhus School of Architecture. Available online at: https://ca2re.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021_10_03_CA2RE_STRATEGIES_screen.pdf (01.10.2025).
IMPORTANT DATES
December 15, 2025: Submission of abstracts
January 15, 2026: Notification of acceptance
January 31, 2026: Submission of essays / visual essays
February 6, 2026: Registration deadline
March 26–28, 2026: Conference
