AGATHÓN
International Journal
of Architecture, Art and Design
ISSN (online) 2532-683X
ISSN (print) 2464-9309
About the Journal
AGATHÓN is an Open Access Scientific International Journal of Architecture, Art and Design, a half-year tool for information and critical training; it aims to contribute to the growth and dissemination of knowledge in the themes covered by Architecture, Engineering, Art and (product and visual) Design. Therefore, the Journal represents a scientific place where Authors, who have carried out original research, can find an opportunity to spread their contributions. Each issue of the Journal includes essays and research works on a specific theme, unpublished works and not submitted for publication with other publishers.
The Journal, through its internal Board, promotes and monitors the double-blind peer review process as a method of selecting articles, providing a mandatory form for reporting. The contributions will be published in English and Italian language so that they can be placed in the widest range of the international scientific communities. The founding principles of the Journal are originality/innovation, the relevance of the investigated topic for the advancement of knowledge, the knowledge and ability to use literature, methodological rigour, the content clarity and presentation style, the impact on the scientific community, but also the easy accessibility and the wide diffusion of the articles; furthermore, the Journal is open to speculative empirical and descriptive research, about phenomena that present new characters, at least for certain important features.
SECTIONS OF THE JOURNAL | Published articles are inserted in one of the following sections:
"Focus" (by invitation for well-known Authors and/or experts in the subject)
"Architecture" (architectural and interior design, urban planning, engineering, technology, history, recovery, restoration, exhibition and museum design, representation)
"Art" (modern and contemporary)
"Design" (for industry, crafts and communication)
and are classified into the following categories: "Essays & Viewpoint", "Research & Experimentation", "Review Articles" or "Dialogues".
AGATHÓN publishes, both electronically and in print, two issues per year, in June and December. The first issue was published in June 2017 and since then the programmed issues have been produced regularly.
To encourage the publication of contributions by Authors with primary affiliation to Universities and Research Institutions in countries defined by the World Bank as low-income and lower-middle income economies, AGATHÓN selects a maximum of two Authors to publish their contributions for free, subject to the positive outcome of the double-blind peer-review process.
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Current Issue

The term ‘innovability’©® has become increasingly popular in the economic and social sciences, a renewed driving force for a new paradigm of development that expresses one of the most crucial challenges of our time and the need for a ‘solidary’ convergence between the two inescapable instances of ‘innovation’ and ‘sustainability’, as if these were opposing and conflicting: regardless of the terminology, even more so in times of a pandemic with its economic and social impact, Humanity promotes one of its prerogatives, i.e., the use of the ‘things’ that nature provides in order to transform them from their primary function (innovation), aware that those resources are not inexhaustible (sustainability). In this forward-looking context, it is necessary to design our best political and system actions to promote the need to innovate through the conscious and effective use of the Planet’s resources. In her inauguration speech as President of the European Commission in 2019, Ursula von der Leyen stated that green and digital transformations are ‘inseparable challenges’. In this sense, the European Green Deal, the Next Generation EU and the New European Bauhaus, as well as other National Plans (e.g. the Italian PNRR), assume strategic importance both in defining, in a clear and univocal way, the future development trajectories of an ecological, digital, cohesive and resilient Europe, as well as in correcting the main imbalances of the old continent, bringing together – despite the heterogeneous conditions of the Member States – the expectations and demands, of a general, common and shared nature, of citizens and businesses. The fil rouge is that of a ‘transition’ that combines themes and debates simultaneously involving science, technology but also philosophy, anthropology, ecology and economics, declined through the many specialized adjectives that define their increasingly delimited fields, yet more open to transdisciplinary logic, a kind of speciation of disciplines and language, recalling names such as Bateson, Commoner, Catton and Dunlap, Carpo, Kelly, Solis, Negroponte, as well as Jonas, Morin, Floridi, Caffo.
In this scenario, in which digital anthropology identifies with the term ‘anticipation’, and in the ability to interact with the continuous flow of innovation to build a new digital ecosystem (Solis, 2016), anthropocentric innovation finds its ideal location, expands and evolves by targeting the capacity to place humans and their needs at the centre of new value propositions. This new form of ‘sustainable innovation’ is bound to have social and environmental well-being as joint and simultaneous priorities, such as facilitating an ethical and sustainable transition for the benefit of the entire community (WEF, 2022). The anthropogenic transformation of space is an energy-intensive action that increases the level of entropy, still a long way from systematic and widespread approaches such as ‘cradle to cradle’ or approaches that are respectful of non-renewable resources. Therefore, the theme does not concern disciplinary statutes but rather interdisciplinary and transversal aspects aimed at guiding and fostering a resilient, sustainable and inclusive ‘recovery’.
In light of the premises above, issue 12 of AGATHÓN collects essays, studies, research and projects on the topic of Innovability©® | Digital Transition to investigate the current widespread transformation that unites dichotomies (analogue and digital), enhances oxymorons (artificial intelligence), creates paradoxes (materiality of the intangible), while indiscriminately involving architecture, humanities and social sciences, anthropology, sociology, ecology, biology, physical-mathematical sciences and neurosciences, with impacts that – while already visible today and accelerated in part by the extraordinary global health emergency – will become even more evident in the medium and long term. A ‘digital’ transformation, which academics such as Floridi (2020) and Galimberti (2020), but also Haraway (2018), Searle (2017) and Chomsky (2011), have placed on a primarily ontological and epistemological level insofar as it involves the essence of ‘things,’ the way we define them, the world around us, and in particular our relationship with the elements that constitute it.