About Gradostroitelʹstvo i arhitektura

Gradostroitelʹstvo i arhitektura (Urban Construction and Architecture): Journal Profile

Gradostroitelʹstvo i arhitektura (Градостроительство и архитектура), published in English as Urban Construction and Architecture, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of architecture, urban planning and construction published by Samara State Technical University in Samara, Russia. The Journals World record for this post lists three ISSNs for the title — 2304-0491, 2542-0151 and 2782-2109 — of which 2542-0151 is the identifier under which the journal is presented on its current publishing platform and 2782-2109 is its electronic ISSN in current listings. The journal began in 2011 and reached volume 16 in 2026, publishing research in Russian with English presentation of titles, abstracts and bibliographic data on its platform.

Its subject territory, as the Journals World record summarises it, runs from architecture, modernity and design and architectural and urban studies through building energy efficiency and sustainability, urban development and cultural heritage, civil and structural engineering, historical architecture and urbanism, cultural heritage management, and construction management. A look at a current issue shows how that breadth is organised in practice: headed sections on building constructions, buildings and facilities; on heat supply, ventilation, air conditioning, gas supply and lighting; on water supply, sewerage and protection of water resources; on building materials and products; and on the theory and history of architecture and the restoration of historical and architectural heritage. Facts in this profile are paraphrased and summarised from the journal's platform pages and current contents, from bibliographic listings for its ISSNs, and from the Journals World record.

Journal at a Glance

History: From a University Herald to a Standalone Journal

The journal's lineage runs through the scholarly publishing of Samara's architecture and civil engineering university — the institution known for many years as SGASU, the Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, and now part of Samara State Technical University. Bibliographic listings record the title's earlier form as Vestnik SGASU. Gradostroitel'stvo i arhitektura — the herald, or vestnik, of that university, devoted to urban construction and architecture — for the years 2011 to 2016, with the standalone title Gradostroitel'stvo i arhitektura continuing from that foundation. The current publisher of record, Samara State Technical University, reflects the institutional consolidation through which Samara's technical and architecture-and-construction universities were brought together.

That origin matters for understanding the journal's character. It is a university scientific journal in the established Russian pattern: founded and owned by a technical university, edited by academics in its architecture and construction faculties, publishing the research of its own community alongside submissions from across Russia, and organised around the disciplinary sections its institute structure supports. The move onto a modern journal platform — the Eco-Vector platform, which hosts a large stable of Russian scientific journals with bilingual article pages, DOIs and structured abstracts — has given that traditional model a contemporary digital form: volume 16, issue 2 in 2026 presents full structured abstracts in English for every article, however locally Samara-focused some of the underlying research may be.

The Samara focus is real and is one of the journal's strengths. Samara is a large Volga city with a remarkable built inheritance — a historic centre of merchant architecture, celebrated constructivist buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, a famous embankment, and the engineering systems of a major industrial city. The journal functions, among other things, as the research record of that place: its pages carry studies of Samara's planning history, its historical dominants, its constructivist heritage, its water networks and its embankment stonework, written by the scholars who know them at first hand.

Scope in Practice: The Sections of a Current Issue

The best way to describe this journal's scope is to walk through how an issue is actually assembled, because the section structure is stable and revealing. The first section, building constructions, buildings and facilities, carries structural and construction engineering: in a recent issue, the repair of hydraulic turbine equipment at hydroelectric plants, the fire resistance of reinforced concrete columns, the strength of reinforced concrete beams under transverse bending, the effect of joint stiffness on modular building design, and a technology for filling window openings in framed residential buildings tested in Samara housing construction.

The building-services sections follow. Heat supply, ventilation, air conditioning, gas supply and lighting hosts work on the engineering systems that keep buildings and cities running — a recent example reviews how deposits form on heat exchanger surfaces and how water treatment and other protections can limit them, with an eye to a predictive mathematical model. Water supply, sewerage and construction systems for the protection of water resources covers the hydraulic side: drop absorption in porous soils, risk assessment for utility networks crowded together in dense urban development, and treatment of backwash water at iron-removal stations using combined natural and industrial filter materials.

Building materials and products forms the fourth pillar: natural stone in the architecture of the Samara embankment, a sprayed-concrete mixture modified with resin and protein additives that nearly doubled its strength, and treatment of siliceous aggregate to improve its sintering and compressive performance. Finally, the theory and history of architecture, restoration and reconstruction section carries the humanities side of the faculty — architectural form, heritage morphotypes, planning history and the transformation of architectural ideas. The Journals World topic list — architecture and design, urban studies, energy efficiency and sustainability, urban development and cultural heritage, civil and structural engineering, historical architecture, heritage management and construction sustainability — maps accurately onto this five-part structure.

Urban Planning and Heritage: The Journal's Signature

If the engineering sections give the journal its breadth, urban planning and architectural heritage give it its signature. Samara-based urban studies in the journal have examined the system of public communication centres in the modern city, the retrospective formation of the city's planning structure and its architectural dominants, and the morphotypes of the historical development — wooden, exemplary, mixed and representative — that make up its regular estate fabric around Revolution Square. A widely cited study catalogued ten objects of Samara constructivism and set out a preservation strategy built on authenticity of materials and arrangements, attention to immediate architectural and urban context, and reversibility of interventions.

That combination — a city read simultaneously as an engineering system and as a historical artefact — distinguishes the journal from narrower construction-science titles. Papers on accident classification in a city water network and papers on the fate of its constructivist landmarks belong, in this journal's worldview, to one subject: how a city is built, serviced, understood and kept. Authors with work on other Russian and comparable cities will find the same dual lens applied, but should expect reviewers to ask both the technical question — does it work, and how was it measured? — and the urban question — what does it mean for the city as a whole?

Publishing Model, Platform and Languages

The journal is published by Samara State Technical University and presented on the Eco-Vector platform under its 2542-0151 identifier, where its archive and current issues are openly presented with bilingual metadata; the Journals World record lists the journal as open access. Its listing in bibliographic compilations of open access architecture and urban planning journals likewise links the title to its platform address and to its records in the Russian eLIBRARY system, the national scientific electronic library through which Russian journals are commonly discovered and through which their citation reporting is organised.

Articles are published in Russian, with English-language titles, abstracts, keywords and reference presentation on the platform — the standard bilingual arrangement for Russian university journals seeking an international readership without abandoning their domestic scholarly community. For a non-Russian-reading researcher, the English abstracts are detailed and structured enough to follow the argument, methods and conclusions of most papers; for a Russian-reading researcher, the journal is a fully usable primary source. Authors should follow the platform's current instructions for authors for manuscript structure, abstract requirements in both languages, and reference formatting, since those requirements are maintained on the platform rather than in any secondary profile.

Metrics, Indexing and the ISSN Note

The Journals World record carries an OpenAlex snapshot for this post: 1,364 works indexed and 1,563 citations, with an h-index of 10 computed on that coverage. For a Russian-language regional university journal, those open-index figures should be read as a floor rather than a ceiling: Russian citation reporting concentrates in the national eLIBRARY and Russian Science Citation Index environment, which international profiles capture only partially. The journal's presence on a major Russian platform, its eLIBRARY records and its long continuous run since 2011 are the practical indicators of its standing within its own scholarly system.

One structured-field point needs stating plainly, because it affects citation and searching. The Journals World record lists three ISSNs together — 2304-0491, 2542-0151 and 2782-2109 — while current platform and bibliographic listings present the title with two: 2542-0151, under which the journal is hosted, and 2782-2109 as its electronic ISSN, with 2011 as the start year and the former vestnik title noted. The additional 2304-0491 in the record is best understood as belonging to the title's earlier registration history within the same Samara university journal lineage. Authors citing the journal should use the ISSN pair shown on the platform for the current title, and searchers should try both the Russian title, the transliterated title and the English title Urban Construction and Architecture, since records are distributed across all three forms.

Who Should Publish Here — and Who Should Read It

The journal's natural authors are researchers in architecture, urban planning and construction science working in Russian technical universities and research institutes: structural and construction engineers, building-services and water engineers, materials scientists working on construction products, and historians and theorists of architecture and urban form. Work grounded in a specific city or region — above all Samara and the Volga region — is welcome here in a way it would not be at a generalist international title, provided the local study is framed so its method or lesson travels. Early-career researchers and doctoral candidates in the Russian system will find a recognised university journal with a stable section structure and an established platform.

Readers outside that system should know what they are getting: applied, place-aware engineering and urban research, much of it tied to Russian norms, standards and building stock, reported in Russian with careful English abstracts. For comparative urbanists, heritage specialists interested in constructivism and in Volga cities, and engineers working on district heating, water systems or reinforced concrete in cold climates, that specificity is the value. Readers looking for an English-language, globally framed planning journal should look elsewhere; readers looking for how a major Russian regional city studies itself should start here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the English title of Gradostroitelʹstvo i arhitektura?
Urban Construction and Architecture. The journal is hosted under that English title on its publishing platform, while its formal title remains the Russian one.

Who publishes the journal?
Samara State Technical University in Samara, Russia — the institution formed with Samara's architecture and civil engineering university, whose herald (vestnik) was the journal's earlier form.

What ISSNs does the journal have?
The Journals World record lists 2304-0491, 2542-0151 and 2782-2109. Current platform and bibliographic listings present 2542-0151, the identifier under which the journal is hosted, with 2782-2109 as the electronic ISSN; the third number belongs to the title's earlier registration history in the same lineage.

When was it founded?
In 2011, per bibliographic listings; volume 16 appeared in 2026. From 2011 to 2016 it appeared in the vestnik form of the Samara architecture and civil engineering university before continuing under its standalone title.

Is it open access?
The Journals World record lists it as open access, and its platform presents current and archive issues openly with bilingual article pages.

What subjects does it cover?
Building constructions and facilities; heat supply, ventilation, air conditioning, gas supply and lighting; water supply, sewerage and water-resource protection; building materials and products; and the theory and history of architecture, restoration and heritage — together with urban planning, energy efficiency and sustainability, and construction management.

How the Journal Fits the Russian Scientific Journal System

To place this journal correctly, a reader needs a short map of the system it belongs to. Russian university scientific journals are typically owned by their universities, edited by faculty, and organised into disciplinary sections that mirror the host institution's institutes — exactly the pattern visible in this journal's five sections. Their articles carry bilingual metadata, are deposited in the national eLIBRARY system, and accumulate their citation record mainly within the Russian Science Citation Index environment, which is why international open indexes show modest totals for a journal that is, domestically, fully established. Publication in such a journal is a normal, recognised part of academic life for doctoral candidates, faculty and institute researchers, and the journals themselves are subject to national listing and quality processes for scientific periodicals.

Within that system, this title has two assets worth noting. The first is continuity and scale of host: Samara State Technical University is a major regional technical university, and a journal that has run continuously since 2011 to volume 16 has demonstrated the institutional commitment that shorter-lived titles lack. The second is platform quality: presentation on the Eco-Vector platform gives the journal structured bilingual article pages, persistent identifiers and a searchable archive of a standard that many university journals worldwide do not reach. For an author choosing between Russian venues in architecture and construction, those are practical, verifiable strengths. For a reader, they mean the archive can actually be navigated — by section, by author, by year — and that a citation taken from the journal can be traced back to a stable article page. In a field where much regional scholarship circulates as PDFs of uncertain provenance, that traceability is worth more than any single metric.

A parallel point applies to citing the journal. A complete citation should name the article's Russian title with its English translation as shown on the platform, the journal title in the form Urban Construction and Architecture or Gradostroitel'stvo i arhitektura, the year, volume and issue, the page range and the article's platform identifier. The citation records visible in scholarly bibliographies — for example, studies of Samara's public centres, planning dominants and constructivist objects, each cited to volume, issue and pages in this journal — show that convention in regular use. Following it keeps a reference traceable across the transliteration variants that Russian journal titles inevitably generate, and ensures that credit for the work reaches the journal in whichever citation index encounters it first.

In short, the journal's record, platform and section structure all point the same way: an established, openly presented university journal whose engineering and heritage research deserves to be read on its own regional and disciplinary terms.

Sources and Verification

This profile is based on the Journals World record for post 365240 (ISSNs 2304-0491, 2542-0151 and 2782-2109; publisher Samara State Technical University, Russia; open access; OpenAlex snapshot of 1,364 works and 1,563 citations), on the journal's own platform pages and current contents on the Eco-Vector journals platform under identifier 2542-0151 (volume 16, 2026, including its five section headings and article abstracts), and on bibliographic listings for open access architecture and urban planning journals, which record the 2011 start, the Samara technical university editorship, the English title Urban Construction and Architecture, the electronic ISSN 2782-2109 and the former vestnik title for 2011–2016. All wording is original summary; submission requirements should be confirmed in the platform's instructions for authors.