Murphy
is an academic journal of architectural history and theory published
once or twice a year in Portuguese and English by the Department of
Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University
of Coimbra and Coimbra University Press.
The
journal’s name alludes to the Irish born architect James
Cavanagh Murphy (1760-1814) who travelled through Portugal between 1788
and 1802 documenting several Portuguese buildings, in particular the
convent of Batalha of which he published a magnificent set of drawings
in 1795. The writings and drawings of Murphy were the first to draw the
attention of modern artistic and architectural circles outside Portugal
to Portuguese architecture.
History
of architecture and urbanism are epistemologically solid fields, as
demonstrated by excellent journals like the North American Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians
or the Italian Annali
di Architettura
(formerly the Bolletino
of Vicenza’s Centro Andrea Palladio). The theory of
architecture, on the other hand, lost the certainty of its object and
became a blurred area of knowledge, somewhere between the modern
tradition of Cambridge’s Architectural
Research Quarterly,
the absolute novelty of the Any
series published by Anyone Corporation, New York, between 1993 and
2000, and journals such as October
(MIT) and Perspecta
(Yale).
In
this international context, Murphy aims at publishing articles and
reviews that bring to light new facts and ideas about the architecture
and urbanism of Portuguese influenced territories and cultures, sharpen
the architectural and theoretical research and demonstrate modern
methodological awareness. In particular, Murphy will be interested in
texts that contribute to the cross referencing of architectural and
urbanistical history and theory with art history, urban history, the
history of science, the history of culture, anthropology, geography,
gender studies, philosophy and visual studies.
Murphy
will publish articles and reviews by Portuguese and non-Portuguese
scholars. As it is published in Portuguese and English and sent to many
researchers and research centers throughout the world, the journal is
committed to giving an international dimension to Portuguese related
architectural and urbanism history and to architectural theory
originally written in Portuguese.
Paulo
Varela Gomes (editor)
Department
of Architecture
Faculty
of Science and Technology
University
of Coimbra
