Weitzman Faculty Join World Congress of Architects in Copenhagen

Weitzman faculty and students from multiple disciplines joined thousands of architects, designers, and scholars convened in Copenhagen in July for the UIA 2023 World Congress of Architects, a triennial conference focused on the role of architects in pressing international issues. They were there to contribute to panels on sustainable design that were organized around the central theme of “Leave no one behind” and learn from colleagues from around the globe.

The World Congress is one of the biggest global architecture conferences, operated by the International Union of Architects (UIA), the only international organization that represents the world’s architects. It’s also the only architectural organization officially recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). A central concern of the 2023 World Congress was how architects can advance the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which address everything from eradicating poverty and hunger to achieving gender equality, responsible consumption, and sustainable cities.

"What is architecture? It is the making of site-specific, context-specific, geographic-specific, environmentally specific solutions," says Ramsgaard Thomsen.

Billie Faircloth, an adjunct professor of architecture at the Weitzman School and partner and research director at KieranTimberlake in Philadelphia, served as co-chair for one of six panels in the World Congress Science Track. The panel was focused on Design for Climate Adaptation, seeking “high and low-tech solutions which make buildings, neighborhoods, landscapes, cities, and regions adaptive and resilient to climate change impacts,” according to the UIA. Over the last several decades, architects have focused intently on ways to mitigate climate change with less carbon-intensive building materials and more environmentally sensitive construction methods, Faircloth says. Less attention has been paid to how architects can learn from community adaptation strategies to the already-changing climate.

“Our goal was to press onward and listen to people who are adapting now, and to expand the adaptation discourse in the built environment through case studies, analysis, prototypes, narratives and argumentation,” Faircloth says.

With her co-chair, Auckland University of Technology Professor Maibritt Pedersen Zari, Faircloth spent two-and-a-half years convening researchers from more than 30 countries and developing themes around climate adaptation. The research was presented across five subthemes: Adaptation with Indigenous Knowledges, Adaptation Through Frameworks and Feedback, Adaptation Through Architectural Technologies, Adaptation Through Nature-Based Solutions, and Adaptation Through Behavior Change and Action. The years leading up to the World Congress in Copenhagen were marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, which both slowed progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and created widespread “professional isolation” among architects, Faircloth says. The convening provided an opportunity to reassert their commitment to sustainable development and to reestablish communities of research and practice, she says.

The Science Track itself was co-led by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, the Paul Philippe Cret Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture at the Weitzman School. The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, rely on fundamental changes in the built environment, but have hitherto had too little connection with architecture, Ramsgaard Thomsen says. The SDGs present a challenge to architects to “change the way we understand how we build, for whom we build, and with what we build,” she says.

“The SDGs are fundamentally context-specific,” she says. “We cannot implement them in a universal way: The solutions to the SDGs must be tailored to their specific context. And that’s why it’s so absurd that architecture has not been understood as the method, because what is architecture? It is the making of site-specific, context-specific, geographic-specific, environmentally specific solutions.”

Beyond their own professional roles in producing the built environment, architects are also “the interfaces to communities” in development projects around the world, Ramsgaard Thomsen says. They play a key role in convening communities and fostering dialogue about how they change.

“All of that methodology is so fundamentally architectural, and so needed to be able to achieve the SDGs,” she says.

Other speakers from the Department of Architecture at the 2023 World Congress included Professor of Architecture Winka Dubbeldam and Ji Yoon Bae, a PhD student.

Billy Fleming, the Wilks Family Director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the Weitzman School, was invited by the Danish group Realdania, which supports architecture and planning projects, to speak on a panel about sea-level rise in coastal cities. The World Congress in Copenhagen was unique for taking the role of design in climate justice as its central theme, not just one theme among many, he says. His talk focused on projects that incorporate climate adaptation and mitigation as twin goals. Many US projects employing nature-based solutions are “post-rationalized” that way, he says, but more focus is needed on designing projects around both imperatives.

“The time for thinking about adaptation and mitigation as separate enterprises is over. We don't have the time, physical space, or financial capacity to do those things separately,” Fleming says.

It was the second visit to a World Congress of Architects for Associate Professor and Graduate Group Chair of Architecture Franca Trubiano. Her first was in Montreal in 1990, the year she first registered as a professional architect. At this year’s conference, Trubiano contributed to an invited panel called To Build With Nothing – On Planetary Boundaries And Strategies Of Avoidance. Her research focused on the global demand for “dirty lumber,” specifically wood-composite flooring products that are “produced in networks that used forced labor, endanger wildlife, and harvested without using best, sustainable practices in forestry,” Trubiano says.

What marked the 2023 World Congress was its “widely international appeal,” Trubiano says, and its deep engagement with questions attentive to how design practices in the Global North have and continue to affect less resource rich communities in the Global South. The UIA convened a truly global community of researchers and practitioners committed to equity in the built environment, Trubiano says.

“It makes you aware that there are individuals that share your goals, values, and aspirations across the world,” she says. “And they may not be the same individuals that are headlining the trade journals and professional press.”