The biennial thesis tender that the Arquia Foundation holds every two years, first held in 1997 as proposed by Carles Martí Arís, who was its director from then until the 9th call. To date 10 calls have been held: 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015.
The jury is proposed by the director of the arquia/thesis collection and ratified by the Board of Trustees of the Arquia Foundation. It consists of a president, two spokespeople and a representative from the Board of Trustees of the Arquia Foundation. From the first to the ninth call, the director was Carles Martí Aris, and he also acted as secretary, with a voice but no vote. As of the tenth call in 2015, the director of the collection is Jose Antonio Sosa-Saavedra.
Its purpose is to access the most relevant theses completed in schools of architecture in order to publish them and thus make valuable material available to those who are interested in architectural studies that would otherwise be difficult to access. To this end, the Arquia Foundation created the arquia/thesis collection, which has so far published 39 theses, all of which have received awards or mentions.
Every two years, the programme invites Spanish architects who were awarded their doctorates by any school or faculty of architecture in the world can to apply to the tender, as well as international architects who gained their doctorate from any Spanish school of architecture.
From the 8th call in 2011, registration has been done through the online registration system by completing the form created for this purpose.
At the beginning of the third quarter, the jury discloses the selection of works that will go through to the second stage of the tender. The Arquia Foundation will request the originals of the preselected theses from their authors.
The jury can award a maximum of two awards and four honourable mentions. The awards consist of the Arquia Foundation committing to edit the doctoral theses.
The editing commitment is conditioned by the redrafting work required, to be carried out by the author of the selected thesis according to the editorial criteria of the Arquia Foundation.
The theses that obtain a "mention" will take preference in the publishing schedules of the Arquia Foundation. The tender may be declared void.
The decision of the tender will be communicated to the participants via email and is final.
