The 2025 Administrators Conference invites academic leaders to engage in a critical exploration of proximity—as a conceptual, spatial, institutional, and ethical condition shaping architectural education and leadership. Set in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a region defined by its blend of mid-century and contemporary design, and a culture that values philanthropy and community impact, the conference offers a timely context for reflection and forward-looking exchange. Join us as we consider the frameworks, relationships, and proximities that will shape the future of architectural education.

ACSA is pleased to announce the launch of a new Faculty Mentoring Program, organized in partnership with the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors (DPACSA). This program intends to help faculty develop mentoring relationships based on their needs, in contrast to the ways in which many departments assign senior faculty as mentors of new faculty, with promotion and tenure primarily in mind. Mentees with mentors will be connected to provide whatever level of interaction works best for all parties.

ACSA and the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia (AASA) are pleased to announce the 2026 International Conference: Planetary Practice. This conference will examine how architecture can operate as a planetary practice—through design, through research, through teaching, and through the cultivation of new forms of knowledge and collaboration. Educators, Practitioners, Researchers, Artists, Designers, and Students are invited to submit work that investigates large-scale challenges through innovative design approaches, research methodologies, digital tools, and alternative epistemologies.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and Think Wood are pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY 6: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2025-2026 academic year. The program is intended to challenge students, working individually or in teams, to reimagine the boundaries of wood construction in the urban environment, leading to the transformation of our existing cities through constructing sustainable buildings made from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and traditional wood materials, and designing healthy living and working environments. Now in its sixth cycle, the series continues to push the urban potential of wood—this year by tackling the “missing-middle” gap between single-family dwellings and high-rise apartments. Entrants will deploy innovative, highly replicable wood-based systems on a real, under-utilized urban site to deliver attainable, human-scaled housing that strengthens community resilience and climate stewardship.

This issue of TAD invites inquiry into soil not as backdrop but as an active thread in shaping form, structure, living habitat, and community. Soil is neither inert nor empty. It is a charged and living substrate that, materially and figuratively, underpins architecture. It is where gravitation meets structure, extraction meets economy, and permanence meets decay. Soil is a medium of transformation: chemical, cultural, and political. Soil supports and resists–shaped by forces of compaction and combustion, microbial life, and industrial processes. The editors strongly encourage submissions highlighting contributions from those traditionally excluded or underrepresented in the field. Submissions may choose to address the focus area identified in this call for papers, but are not required to do so.