About

TRIBELON Journal of Drawing and Representation of Architecture, Landscape and Environment is the new, official journal of Architectural Studies, Identity, Memory, and Digitisation of Cultural Heritage within the Drawing area at the University of Florence. It offers a critical space of debate for the different paths of enquiry within the national and international panorama of science of representation. It aims at bringing together care for contemporaneity, a dialogue with tradition, and attention to possible futures.
The Journal intends to promote a close engagement with theoretical perspectives in the science of drawing, architectural survey, and representation, while maintaining and enhancing the specificity of the applied approach to drawing and digital database issues in visual communication.

Editor-in-chief
Sandro Parrinello, University of Florence, Italy 
DIDA - Department of Architecture, Via della Mattonia 8, 50122 Florence     
sandro.parrinello@unifi.it - tribelon@dida.unifi.it

Call for Papers - Vol. 3, No. 5 (2026) - (pdf eng) (pdf ita)

Signifying Sign

Drawing is an expression and, therefore, not a neutral gesture. Every line drawn, every mark inscribed on a surface, every variation in thickness or rhythm, contains a tension between intention and meaning. The sign transcends its condition as a graphic mark by associating itself with gesture or symbolic reference, becoming the bearer of meaning within a signifying construction. Drawing, as a language, produces reality in a place, the represented one, where technical abstraction encounters the expressive dimension, generating meaning through the sign. The significant sign is therefore defined by its semantic function, producing meaning beyond mere measurement; it activates the imagination and organises thought within the image. In any drawing, what matters is the meaningful charge each sign carries. In an era marked by digital drawing, software generates perfect, infinite, editable and replicable signs, yet not all of these signs truly signify something. Drawing remains significant when it carries an intention that produces a reading in the viewer, like an open sign awaiting interpretation, allowing itself to be inhabited by doubt. Its strength lies precisely in not being exhausted at first glance, but in holding attention and generating questions. In this sense, drawing, as a tool of design, is first and foremost a critical site, a space for thought, and - precisely in its constant search for simplification - a critical synthesis and, at the same time, a field of resistance to simplification. 

This call invites interdisciplinary contributions that explore the meaning, application, and challenges associated with the encoding and decoding of the sign through theoretical, empirical, and practice-based research, proposing new perspectives or in-depth insights in concrete or abstract contexts, historical, contemporary and future.

Papers, in the form of essays/articles, following the editorial standards, should be submitted to the journal's editorial office by the following dates:

Abstract: February 20^th, 2026
Full paper: April 1^st, 2026 
Publication: June, 2026

Download the journal’s editorial guidelines here:

(Norme editoriali ITA) (Editorial Standars ENG)