Architecture concerns the city where we live and the spaces we inhabit. It has the dual quality of being both volumetric and spatial, existing at the boundaries between what it encloses and what it reveals. We architects are designers of limits, of envelopes, of more or less defined or diffuse borders that construct our exteriority, what lies beyond our skin, and marks the boundary of our interiority. These boundaries are sometimes opaque, sometimes diffuse, sometimes virtual, but they are laden with meanings that distinguish the inner world—perhaps the private, the intimate, the space of security—from the social, the public, the common, the space of the polis. To substantiveize indoor architecture and distinguish from outdoor also entails reflecting on questions of scale, on the proportional relationships between body and physical space, on functional interaction and ergonomics, on connections with what is near, close, and immediate; and to differentiate it from exterior architecture by a blurred boundary that perhaps isn't really a boundary at all, the discipline's role in constructing the city, the landscape, and the territory—the architecture of the community.
The fifth edition of the Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture is an opportunity to share the research findings of those working indoor or outdoor, at any scale and in relation to any of its boundaries.

Juan Serra Lluch & Ivan Cabrera i Fausto
Conference Chairs | Higher Technical School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Valencia