Becoming. Architectures for a planet in transition<\/em>, set the tone for the five days: a present participle that invites the discipline to be observed in motion, attentive to the climatic, demographic and social shifts already shaping every design decision. A six-member curatorial team \u2014 Pau Bajet, Maria Giram\u00e9, Maria Beneditto, Tomeu Ramis, Pau Sarquella and Carmen Torres \u2014, together with honorary president Fuensanta Nieto, built a programme that treats architecture as a collective laboratory, capable of offering concrete answers to the great challenges shared by cities everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHeat is redefining architecture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The opening day placed climate change at the centre of the debate. Swiss architect Philippe Rahm, who works in France, captured the shift in a phrase that travelled across the congress: \u201cWe are no longer in a European climate, but in that of southern Spain or North Africa: we no longer design for Switzerland, but for Tunisia.\u201d His approach calls for designing with climatic parameters from the outset of a project, drawing on the awnings and shutters of Seville or the Tunisian mashrabiya, capable of shielding against sun and wind without giving up ventilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mireia Luz\u00e1rraga, of the studio Takk, argued for treating thermal inequality as part of the design brief and presented a house conceived in layers, with a blind fa\u00e7ade and materials such as cork, where cold and heat filter in gradually. Matthias Schuler, of Transsolar, warned about the thermal inertia of buildings faced with increasingly warm nights, while Javier Garc\u00eda Germ\u00e1n, of Totem Arquitectos, pointed to the beach chiringuito as a model of ordinary architecture \u2014 shade, airflow and views, resolved with restraint \u2014 and called to \u201cmove architectural problems beyond the economic or technical, and integrate them with ambition into policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reflection extended into urban planning too. Japanese architects from the studio Bow-Wow presented their research into a possible night-time urbanism for Tokyo, drawing inspiration from the nocturnal life of Cairo, Rio de Janeiro and Bangkok, and pointed to European cities \u2014 walkable, safe, human in scale \u2014 as fertile ground to test it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Housing, a \u201cnon-negotiable\u201d right<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The congress\u2019s second major axis turned on housing and materials. Eva Franch and Takk presented the installation Monusediment, on the barriers \u2014 mostly dams \u2014 that block sediment from reaching the Ebro Delta, paired with eight stories of possible repair. Barcelona City Council showcased its commitment to reusing the rubble from each construction site in the next one, with bricks recycled from concrete and algae. And the studio H Arquitectes demonstrated, with a simple wooden volume placed vertically and then horizontally, how orientation alone can transform a piece\u2019s relationship to space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The closing ceremony, held on Thursday, 2 July at the Palau de Congressos, brought the gathering to an end with the reading of the Barcelona Declaration, delivered by the president of the CSCAE, Marta Vall-llossera. The text sets out six commitments \u2014 time, matter, life, justice, scale and meaning \u2014 that the profession adopts as a roadmap. On housing, the declaration is explicit: housing is a right, not the return on an investment, and \u201cthe right to housing is non-negotiable.\u201d On construction, it adds that every intervention carries a global cost, and that quality and beauty belong to everyone, not to a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A legacy bound for Beijing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Architect and urban planner Joan Busquets, honorary president of the congress, placed this edition in perspective: thirty years on from 1996, the discipline\u2019s challenges are now shared ground for the media and the public alike, and solutions already exist \u2014 the task lies in applying them with attention to local tradition and to each territory\u2019s forms of governance. UIA president Regina Gonthier described the congress as an experience that leaves behind a renewed planetary awareness: the certainty of inhabiting the planet alongside other species and other forms of leadership that deserve respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ceremony closed with a symbolic gesture: Barcelona\u2019s mayor, Jaume Collboni, handed the UIA flag to the deputy mayor of Beijing, host of the 2029 congress. The central exhibition, Architectures for a Planet in Transition, spanning 4,000 square metres of installations and unpublished prototypes at Les Tres Xemeneies, remains open and free to the public until 19 July, giving Barcelona a few more weeks to keep inhabiting the questions the congress has placed on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UIA World Congress of Architects brings together 10,000 professionals and
\n30,000 attendees around heat, housing and the materials of the future. Photo: Arnau Rovira.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[624],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[249],"class_list":["post-67935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":249,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"amoratinos","display_name":"Ex\u00e1gono","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/95418ef5af1f1a520d5386cfe82ba253c88665f94a4343ec69a36d8df034ab4b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","avatar_alt":"","avatar_decorative":"","author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67935"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67946,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67935\/revisions\/67946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67935"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=67935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}