editor
SPOOL is an open-access journal in the field of ‘architecture and the built environment’. Published at Delft University, it is a cooperation between different universities, with an editorial team from Delft as well as University of Twente, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and University of Antwerp.
SPOOL puts a strong emphasis on four key topics: Science of Architecture; Landscape Metropolis; Energy Innovation and Cyber-physical Architecture.
These four topics refer to existing and upcoming research programmes/interests in Europe and beyond. Treating these topics as threads within one journal allows SPOOL to focus on the interrelationship between the fields.
SPOOL uses the term ‘landscape metropolis’ to address urban formations in and beyond the city that - despite their increasing ubiquity - still lack in-depth attention from the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, designerly concepts of development, guidelines for planning and governance, and design theoretical apprehension. The prefix ‘landscape’ is used to describe attention to these topics through the lens of landscape architecture and offers novel potentials: in considering the metropolis as a cultural phenomenon that is constructed mentally as well as physically and socially.
Its 5th issue brings together 2 particular components of the landscape metropolis: the political aspect of spatial design, projected on the public space type of the urban park. The journal issue reflects the outcomes of the conference with the same title, that was held in June 2018 in Vienna, when professionals and scholars, from various fields dealing with public open spaces, put politics up for discussion, in order to gain a range of perspectives from which to consider and discuss the topic of politics behind the built environment.