Vol. 1 (2018): ADAMarts

Europe’s broad assortment of academic journals has a newcomer – ADAMarts. This journal, dedicated to both architecture and media arts, constitutes a rarity. Architecture is usually more associated with engineering, given the close ties between the two fields, especially in practice, while media arts is more often affiliated with literature, from where it draws considerable inspiration and material.

Ever since the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga discussed the importance of play in culture and society in his 1938 work Homo Ludens, we continue to construct our identity in a deliberate fashion. Today’s individuals, having lost their ties to nature, perceive their surrounding environment conditionally and are subject to the power of authorities and technologies. For architects, the construction of the physical environment goes hand in hand with media artists’ simulation and modification of layouts in the virtual environment. RISEBA’s motto “Business Meets Art” is not an empty phrase. ADAMarts is ready to meet the challenge of combining research on architecture and media arts with another element – analysis of market players’ economic interests. Meanwhile, some contributors’ excursions into the history of twentieth-century city planning and architecture may serve not only as reference material for future researchers, but also as instructions for correcting future mistakes.

The first issue includes a broad spectrum of topics, from artistic research in the network society and the aesthetics of 360˚ filmmaking to analysis of uninhabited quarters of the shrinking capital city and the challenge of interpreting Riga’s early medieval centre in architectural forms pleasing to contemporary society.

Editor-in-chief Janis Lejnieks, PhD in Architecture, Senior Research Fellow at RISEBA University