MATTERS

We are pleased to invite contributions to the CA²RE Conference Ghent 2027, hosted by the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture and LUCA School of Arts.

IMPORTANT DATES

October 12, 2026 – Publication of call
December 15, 2026 – Abstract submission
January 31, 2026 – Notification of acceptance
February 15, 2026 – Registration deadline
March 15, 2026 – Submission of essays / visual essays

April 6-8, 2026 – Conference

The event welcomes doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, academics, practitioners, artists and designers engaged in design-driven and artistic research. As in previous CA²RE conferences, participants will present and discuss their work through intensive peer review, critical dialogue and exchange with an international community of researchers.

Ghent 2027 offers a special edition within the CA²RE series. Alongside the conference, participants will engage with MATTERS, a curated exhibition dedicated to design-driven and artistic research, and with a parallel programme connected to the Department of Architecture’s ADRO peer-review procedures. This unique constellation brings together three complementary formats:

CA²RE — a platform for doctoral research exchange and peer review;
ADRO — a framework for discussing and advancing approaches to the assessment of artistic and design research;
MATTERS — a public exhibition environment in which artefacts, installations, prototypes, performances, visual essays and other research outputs become part of a broader conversation on research production, communication and evaluation.

MATTERS

Design-driven and artistic research increasingly operates through multiple forms: texts, drawings, artefacts, installations, prototypes, performances, exhibitions and public encounters. Yet the relationship between making, showing, discussing and evaluating research remains an open question.

MATTERS takes this condition as its point of departure. The conference explores how material, spatial and performative practices contribute to the production of knowledge, and how research can be communicated, tested and assessed through forms that exceed the written text alone. We invite contributors to reflect on the role of matter, materialisation and material thinking within their research processes and outputs.

How does knowledge emerge through making? How can artefacts act as research arguments? What role can exhibition, experimentation and public encounter play in the development and evaluation of research?

To navigate these questions, contributors are invited to position their work through an array of relational perspectives:

Beyond matter · Via matter · Despite matter · Thanks to matter · In matter · On matter · After matter.

THREE INTERCONNECTED REGISTERS

Approaching matter

01 — MATERIAL CONDITIONS
Matter as material

Addressing construction, fabrication, material performance, tactility, craft and the shifting relationship between physical and digital realities.

02 — CRITICAL URGENCY
Matter that matters

Engaging ecological, social, political, technological and cultural issues that define what matters today.

03 — EPISTEMIC CARRIER
Matter as knowledge

Recognising how knowledge is generated, embodied, tested and transmitted through the specific practices of design-driven and artistic research.

By challenging the conventional distinction between artefact and theory, exhibition and discourse, material practice and academic argument, MATTERS opens a collaborative space in which material forms become active instruments in the production, communication and evaluation of knowledge.

EVENT

(local website – program, submissions and other details)