About the Journal

Drawing On emerged from a research symposium, Plenitude and Emptiness, held in Edinburgh in October 2013. Founded by Konstantinos Avramidis, Chris French, Piotr Lesniak, Maria Mitsoula, and Dorian Wiszniewski, it began as an initiative of the PhD Architecture by Design community at the University of Edinburgh, who served as the journal's curators. It is now sustained by an editorial board from Universities and organisations across the UK and Europe, and an international review board made up of accomplished senior scholars with interests in various aspects of architecture (e.g. design, theory, pedagogy, politics, culture). Building on the ambitions of that original symposium, Drawing On now provides a platform for developing topics associated with or addressed through design-led research into architecture. The ambition of the journal is to promote a closer, more direct engagement between the author, their research material and the reader, all of whom play a role in creating an interestingly rich plenitude in architectural thinking and imagining.

The premise guiding Drawing On today is that design-led research involves, and indeed relies upon, multiple modes and means to fully elaborate its thinking. To this end the journal adds to the conventional format of a peer-reviewed journal an additional space of presentation intended to show design-research material in their native formats. Each article has multiple entry points, consisting of a formatted paper, including images and notes, and supplementary space for the elaboration of a design-research project (including video, audio, animation, photography, paintings, drawings, documentation of models, designed texts, etc.). The reading of the work involves reading across these multiple modes, allowing for various formats to take the lead in communicating the means, outputs and methods of design-led research. All of these formats can viewed online through the Drawing On website.

Those interested in submitting work to Drawing On should supply a 400 word abstract, with associated multimedia content (video, audio, prezi, etc) submitted as separate pieces, to editors@drawingon.org. All submissions should include a cover page, giving your name, 100-word biography, email address and institutional affiliation (if appropriate), as well as an indication of the specific Call for Submissions to which you are responding. Abstracts will be reviewed by the editors and, upon acceptance, completed papers and accompanying work will be issued for double-blind peer-review. Accepted pieces will be returned to the authors for final revisions prior to publication. For further information visit About.

Drawing On is a biennial publication. Work is covered by Creative Commons, Attribution/Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International copyright (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). All articles submitted will be assigned a DOI through the University of Edinburgh publication service Edinburgh Diamond. We are currently indexed by SUDOC and ROAD, and are seeking indexing with various other databases. For inquiries please contact editors@drawingon.org.