Coord. Mário Krüger, José Pinto Duarte, Gonçalo Canto Moniz
The fifth number of Joelho is the first issue in English, consolidating the effort to internationalize the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (DARQ), and its publisher, e|d|arq. This may happen thanks to our full professor Mário Kru¨ger, who chose Joelho to publish one of the outputs of his most recent research project — Digital Alberti: Tradition and innovation in the architectural theory and practice. To him and to his team, we thank for this opportunity.
Digital Alberti brings the architect who personalizes the architecture culture, Leon Battista Alberti, to the contemporaneity where the digital is one of its icons. Somehow, we think that Digital Alberti is also a good metaphor to Joelho and its role in the academic journals scene — a place where the classical and post-modernist architectural culture meet.
Digital Alberti and Joelho, as well as DARQ, are also together on the trends for a humanistic approach to architecture, combining design with an intellectual attitude. Last November, in a lecture in Coimbra, Francesco Furlan, one of the world’s experts on Alberti, underlined this idea of a broader stand of the humanistic architect who has a vital necessity for researching, because "in the research activity, the process is more important than the results; that is the Albertian lesson".
This duality, between tradition and innovation, may be observed in the papers presented at the Digital Alberti International Conference, selected by a peer review process, that Joelho publishes in this issue, as well as the Digital Alberti Exhibition, held in Coimbra and Lisbon in 2013.
On his return to Joelho, we would like to quote Mário Kru¨ger (2001, p.28) and his paper published in our ecdj (Joelho, first series) number 5, where he built some of the foundations of the research in DARQ — "the progress of knowledge that transforms the seemingly inexplicable in predictable result".
The albertian girl designed by Penousal Machado and Tiago Martins for the cover is the best illustration of this beautiful idea.