July 8-11, 2026 | Brisbane, Australia

Protected: 2026 AASA/ACSA International Conference

Catalyst

Schedule

June 25, 2025

Submission Deadline

November 2025

Submission Notification

July 8-11, 2026

International Conference

Catalyst

Climate and Justice

Catalyst, 2026 International Conference focuses on ignite conversations across traditionally disconnected disciplinary, cultural, and generational domains.. With this call, through the lens of Just Transitions, the conference organizers solicits scholarly presentations for presentation and publication. The conference will provide a platform for discourse on climate and social justice issues as they relate to themes of culture, technology, education, and place.

Submission acceptance will be subject to a double-blind peer review process, based on an initial abstract review and later a second double-blind peer review of full-length manuscripts. Inclusion in the publication will be subject to review acceptance, compliance with submission deadlines and formatting guidelines, and payment of the conference registration fee. Please kindly note that multiple submissions are subject to multiple registrations.

Conference Themes

At Catalyst we will delve into four tracks using the theme of Just Transitions, which will be carefully woven throughout each of the conference tracks.

Just Transitions

As the world adjusts to the reality of climate change and its impacts, most First Nations peoples are already feeling the effects. Traditional ways of being have sustained Indigenous communities through ice ages, drought, and a changing climate for time immemorial. However, through the impacts of colonisation, these ways of being are under threat. Delegates throughout all tracks will be invited to consider how Indigenous knowledges sit at the core of climate solutions, and that to change our path, it is time to Indigenise the way we learn, practice, and live.

Climate & Education

This conference track will examine how architecture schools can engage with climate change issues through innovative curriculum models, the move toward ‘Indigenising the curriculum’, interdisciplinary programs, work integrated learning, and alternative pedagogies, climate literacy. This track will address the challenges knowledge creation and transfer in culturally and socially responsive ways.

Climate & Culture

Following centuries of global development driven by extractivist paradigms the move toward circular, regenerative and relational ontologies calls for a reframing of the architectural canon; looking back to look forward and to reframe the role of the architect. This theme seeks inspiring examples of climate-responsive local and vernacular architecture, material culture, and cultural landscapes. We seek to generate discourse that examines how our existing building stock emerged from particular environmental, sociocultural, and political climates set alongside new agendas – the theoretical implications of retrofit and adaptive reuse in architectural practice and education now and into the future.

Climate & Technology

A changing climate generates design challenges across multiple scales and knowledge domains. From megacities to regional areas – new sociotechnical systems are required to build communities that mitigate and adapt to climate change. This conference track seeks to interrogate interdisciplinary methods relating to building performance, material manufacturing, AI and machine learning, and beyond. Learners, practitioners, and educators alike will be encouraged to speculate about the role of systems and human behaviour in sustainable futures and the necessity of design solutions that emerge at the intersection of the arts and sciences.

Climate & Place

As cities grow up and out, we must confront the entrenched modernist paradigms that have shaped 20th-century development patterns. It is our collective responsibility to challenge the status quo and confront issues of ageing infrastructure and urban sprawl, which means cities struggle to meet the needs of contemporary society. This conference track will challenge delegates to consider the city from the perspective both human and non-human stakeholders to investigate sustainable development strategies that foster resilience, social cohesion, and civic pride. This can no longer be considered a development ‘option’ but rather a mainstream imperative, in which holistic approaches to sub-/urban renewal and regeneration, careful approaches to retrofit, and prioritisation of environmental and cultural heritage are the norm.

Call for Abstracts

Presentation | Publication

Selection of scholarly presentations will be based on double-blind peer review of abstracts (500 word limit) accompanied by optional images. Authors of accepted abstracts who present their work at the conference are then invited to submit a full paper for a second peer review for inclusion in a conference proceedings. It is expected that feedback from the abstract review and conference presentation will inform the final paper.

Abstracts must not exceed 500-words and include no more than 5 optional images.
Abstracts must be prepared for anonymous review (remove author/contributor names and affiliation identification).
Authors may present no more than one paper or poster at the conference. No individual may be listed as co-author on more than two submissions.
Submissions must report on recently completed work and cannot have been previously published or presented in public, except to a regional audience.
Submissions will be accepted in English.

Call for Projects

Art, Architecture, Posters, Other…

Selection of posters will be based on a blind peer-review of an abstracts (250-word limit) accompanied by up to ten images. Authors of accepted posters who present their work at the conference are then invited to submit a final poster for publication. The final poster will be an A1, portrait file that will be included in the conference proceedings. It is expected that feedback from the initial review will inform the final poster.

Poster authors should prepare a 250-word abstract along with up to 10 images.
Selection of posters will be based on a single-stage double-blind peer review process. Accepted authors will upload finalized PDFs prior to the conference.
Posters must be prepared for anonymous review (remove author/contributor names and affiliation identification).
Authors may present no more than one paper or poster at the conference. No individual may be listed as co-author on more than two submissions.
Submissions must report on recently completed work and cannot have been previously published or presented in public, except to a regional audience.
Submissions will be accepted in English.

Submissions, Presentation & Publication

Abstracts & Projects

Submission Process

Follow the steps below to complete your submission. The ACSA online interface will guide you through the remaining steps.

Log in using your ACSA username and password. Click here if you forgot your password.
Click the Enter Now button.
Select 2026 International Conference from the dropdown menu and click the “Create New Submission” button.
Click “Add Myself as Author” and then add other authors, if applicable. To do this you will search for the authors First and Last Names and then select the author and click “Add Author and Continue”. To Add an author that is not already in the system, Click “Add New Author” and fill out the required fields and then click “Add Author”.
The next page is the Submission page, fill in the text boxes for title, abstract and citations. These are simple copy/paste text boxes. Click “Continue”.
On the submission detail page, Select primary and secondary themes including: Climate & Education, Climate & Culture, Climate & Technology, Climate & Place, see above.
Select your presentation and final submission type: Abstract/Paper or Project.
Check-off the Blinded Submission question, “Confirm that your submission is prepared in a way that does not expose any identifying information. Identifying information most commonly refers to authors’ names and institutions, as well as any photos of the authors.” and click save & continue.
To add graphics, attach them by clicking Browse and then click upload. Graphics need to be JPEG & JPG file types.
On the Proofread page you have the opportunity to review your work before finalizing your submission.
Click Submit. You have completed your submission and should receive a confirmation email for verification.
Following the double-blind review process, the committee makes final acceptance decisions. All authors will be notified of the status of their submission and will receive comments from their reviewers. Accepted submissions will be invited to expand on their research and submit a full paper or project for a second peer-review.

How to Submit

Educators, Practitioners, Researchers, Artist, Designers and Students are all encouraged to submit. The deadline for submitting to the International Conference is June 25, 2025. If you are already an ACSA member, please log into the website to submit your abstract. If you are not an ACSA member or do not have an ACSA login, please create one online HERE. You may also request access by contacting ACSA directly at info@acsa-arch.org.

Presentation

Following the blind peer-review process, the conference steering committee make final acceptance decisions. The conference will be held in-person in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Sessions will be composed of accepted authors, allowing for both scholarly and applied research to mutually demonstrate impact. Each session will have a moderator, who will coordinate with authors regarding session guidelines as well as the general expectations for the session in advance. Accepted authors will have approximately 10-minutes to present in a session at the conference. Conference organizers reserves the right to withhold a presentation from the program if the author fails to comply with guidelines, including deadlines and requests for submission of materials.

Authors accepted must pay full conference registration in order to present in-person at the conference and be eligible for publication.

Publication

Accepted authors, that present at the conference, will be invited to develop their research into a full paper or poster for publication. Authors will be required to complete a copyright transfer form and agree, prior to publishing.

Full Papers are to be 2500-4000 words with optional 1-5 images.
Projects may be up to 1000 words with 5-10 images.
Final full submissions, will be due one-month after the conference.
These full submissions will go through a second double-blind peer-review prior to publication in the conference proceedings.