The Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Architecture invites abstract submissions for the upcoming EKA Arh Conference 2026: To Be Continued…, a biennial international peer-reviewed conference held as a satellite event of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale.
Knowledge about climate change and the possible adaptations, mitigation strategies, and transformations of the built environment is more abundant than ever. Yet evidence alone does not create agreement. Meaningful transitions depend on whether this knowledge becomes a collective concern. Something shared, debated and shaped with those most affected by change – from residents and communities to public authorities and industry actors. Without participation and inclusion, even the most necessary transitions stall.
Fragmentation persists: in expertise, in governance, in society. Change feels imminent yet never arrives.
EKA Arh Conference 2026 invites research at the frontiers of planning and design – work that connects innovation with the lived realities of people and places. We seek contributions that address climate change, biodiversity loss, efficiency, and affordability by bridging the gaps that slow progress. Where are the fault lines, the conflicts, the pressures, the unresolved questions? How might architectural and urban research help carry unfinished transitions forward as shared concerns rather than isolated technical tasks?
This EKA Arh Conference seeks contributions that make continuity possible where fragmentation dominates – not by delivering final answers, but by opening new alignments and directions. We welcome work that treats objective knowledge as a starting point and collective concern as the arena where it becomes actionable. We invite reflections and methods that support the ongoing negotiations through which meaningful transformations emerge.
2026 CONFERENCE THEMES
The conference explores these questions across three interconnected scales:
Territorial Scale
Cities and regions face a new reality in which established certainties no longer hold. Borders re-emerge. Flows of energy, people, and goods falter. Networks must be reconfigured. New infrastructures appear even as political divisions sharpen. Collective concerns – security, autonomy, identity, resilience – shape decisions as powerfully as technical assessments. Memory, relationships, and narrative often outweigh models and metrics in determining priorities. Continuity itself becomes contested territory: borders are redrawn, priorities renegotiated, and new forms of connection gradually take shape.
Building Scale
The built environment reflects these tensions. Buildings leak energy, sit in the wrong places, or no longer serve contemporary needs, yet they are too valuable to abandon and too costly to replace. Working with what exists – adapting, densifying, transforming – becomes essential. Technical assessments meet the capacities and constraints of practitioners and industry, as well as the lived concerns of residents and communities, where identity, equity and belonging shape decisions as much as feasibility. The scale of the challenge calls for approaches that span systems rather than isolated sites and that support shared orientations amid competing priorities.
Material Scale
Material cycles reveal similar discontinuities. Landfills grow. Demolition persists even within renovation. Markets continue to favour extraction over reuse. Circularity is widely endorsed in principle but structurally hindered in practice. Overcoming these barriers requires coordination across technology, policy, logistics, and design – aligning standards, timelines, and responsibilities so that reuse becomes viable rather than exceptional.
IMPORTANT DATES
Abstract submission deadline: 31st March, 2026
- Extended abstract notification: 15th April, 2026
- Extended abstract submission deadline: 31st May, 2026
- Extended abstract review and conference acceptance: 15th June, 2026
- Full paper submission deadline: 15th August, 2026
- Conference: 10th September, 2026
Please use the official Abstract Format File for submission.
Abstract submission: ekaarh.conference@artun.ee
About EKA Arh Conference
EKA Arh is a biennial international peer-reviewed conference organised by the Faculty of Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Previous editions include:
- Space and Digital Reality (2019)
- Innovation and Digital Reality (2022)
- Building Systems (2024)
Conference Chair
Siim Tuksam
Head of Research
Faculty of Architecture
Estonian Academy of Arts
siim.tuksam@artun.ee