How can Architecture be critical in a digital era?
Diogo Borges Ferreira (1997, Portugal) is an architect and independent researcher. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto and studied at the Technische Universität München.
His professional path includes collaborations with the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, Casa da Arquitetura, Carrilho da Graça Arquitetos, and ATA Atelier. He currently leads the research department at MASSLAB, collaborates with CEAU / FAUP, and is a contributing writer at ArchDaily.
In parallel, he co-edits Mnemonic Studio, collaborates with Architects Declare Portugal, and works independently across publishing, communication, and research. His practice often explores how architecture is communicated, interpreted, and positioned within broader cultural frameworks.
He has contributed to several publications and participated in both individual and collective exhibitions. He is also a founding member of the Portuguese-Guatemalan Chamber of Commerce, reinforcing his interest in international collaboration.
Over time, there has been a gradual fragmentation of architecture’s critical thinking and production. For the discipline, this loss of critical place represents a decline in the way it is apprehended and discussed. Its discursive subject materials have become de-characterised. The analysis of architecture is caricatured as not being sufficiently critical; it is constructed based on political correctness and plays a more descriptive and impressionistic role rather than a progressive one concerning the object being criticized. To this movement of loss must be added the fact that in recent years criticism has taken on a punctual, non-systemic role and has gradually been transformed into a type of descriptive journalism incapable of assuming the responsibility it should have in the production of new phenomena, strategies, and ideas.
For this reason, asking How can architecture be critical in the digital era? is to resist the passivity that has overtaken the discipline. Time is running out, and the materials that illustrate contemporaneity blur into a dizzying overlay of information. In this context, questioning becomes a tool for slowing down, for reclaiming attention and depth. It is a way of resisting the demand for immediacy and the logic of accumulation that defines digital discourse.
This is a publishing initiative grounded in method, not permanence: a way to think through questions and resist accumulation. From the central inquiry, a set of speculative variations unfolds: How can architecture be political, sustainable, communicative, desirable, or even simply be, in the digital era? Each question invites a situated response. Through diverse contributions, the project seeks to cultivate slower, more deliberate forms of engagement. Grounded in equity, diversity, and sustainability, it brings together architects, editors, curators, researchers, and designers to trace an alternative cartography of architectural thought — plural, ephemeral, critically alive.