MATTERS
Exhibition, Evaluation and Knowledge Production in Design-Driven and Artistic Research.
What happens when research does not fit neatly into a journal article or a book chapter?
Research in architecture, design and the arts does not always arrive in the form of a publication. It may take shape as an exhibition, a prototype, a spatial intervention, a film, a performance, a model or a material experiment. Such outcomes are increasingly recognised within research environments, yet they continue to raise fundamental questions: how do these forms contribute to knowledge? What can exhibitions do that publications cannot? And how can research be discussed and evaluated when its primary outcome is not a written text?
The call
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.
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.
Approaching matter
Matter as material
Addressing construction, fabrication, material performance, tactility, craft and the shifting relationship between physical and digital realities.
Matter that matters
Engaging ecological, social, political, technological and cultural issues that define what matters today.
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.
CA²RE, peer review and exchange
The CA²RE conference is the academic core of the event. Researchers and doctoral candidates from an international network of universities and art and architecture schools present ongoing design-driven and artistic research. Rather than following the format of a conventional conference centred on papers, CA²RE focuses on the presentation and discussion of research through artefacts, spatial practices, visual material, prototypes, performances and other non-textual forms of knowledge.
Presentations are followed by moderated peer discussions with international researchers, supervisors, artists, architects and experts. The conference functions as an intensive environment for peer exchange, methodological reflection, doctoral training and the development of design-driven and artistic research methodologies.
ADRO, evaluating research output
ADRO — Artistic and Design-led Research Output — is an international expert panel concerned with the evaluation and recognition of research whose primary outcomes are not conventional academic publications, but physical, visual, spatial, performative or sonic artefacts. Convened in Ghent as a dedicated expert meeting, it addresses how such work can be presented, assessed, discussed and validated.
By bringing ADRO experts together with CA²RE participants, Ghent 2027 connects current doctoral and artistic research practices with broader questions of research quality, peer review and the dissemination and recognition of non-textual research outputs.
MATTERS, a curated platform
A central component of the conference is MATTERS, an international public exhibition presenting sixteen practices across architecture, visual arts and artistic and design-led research. Installations, 1:1 prototypes, models, performative settings, drawings, audiovisual works and spatial interventions are presented throughout the ground floor and courtyard of Campus Sint-Lucas Hoogstraat Ghent.
The exhibition starts from the double meaning of matter: matter as tangible material and construction, and matters as the ecological, technological, spatial and societal questions that demand attention today. The presented artefacts are approached not simply as illustrations of research, but as forms of knowledge in their own right — accompanied by public discussions, guided visits, lectures, performances and conversations with participating researchers and artists.
MATTERS is not conceived as a one-off exhibition attached to a conference; it is being developed as a longer-term initiative that will continue beyond the Ghent edition.
Ready to contribute?
Submissions are made through EasyChair. See the full requirements for abstracts, essays, visual essays and artefact documentation.