Conference: The Latest Architecture and News

Zaha Hadid Architects have announced the breaking ground for the Centre of Mediterranean Culture in Reggio Calabria, Italy. The 24,000 square-meter structure houses diverse spaces, including a network of exhibition galleries, both permanent and temporary, capable of showcasing a wide range of displays. An integrated aquarium is a key feature, offering visitors a glimpse into the marine life of the Strait. The building also provides conference facilities, including a large auditorium suitable for performances, presentations, and industry events. Dedicated educational spaces are incorporated to support the region's schools, and visitor amenities include a bookshop and a restaurant and bar overlooking the port.

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The 2023 United Nations Conference of the Parties, more frequently referred to as COP28 is a joining of over 160 countries that intrinsically agree to combat harmful human impacts on the climate. The International Climate Summit takes place annually, bringing together heads of state, delegates, and representatives from various countries to negotiate actions and agreements related to climate mitigation. Last year, COP 27 was held between November 6 and November 18, 2022, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. As the upcoming COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates is around the corner, it is worth looking at the conference’s impact and what to expect.

COP 28 will convene from November 30 to December 12 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In this year’s COP28, the program will be geared towards responding to the Global Stocktake and “closing the gaps to 2023.” The COP presidency has launched a consultation on thematic areas, encouraging international stakeholders to highlight the most pressing issues that should be prioritized in COP28. The themes for this year are Technology & Innovation, Inclusion, Frontline Communities, and Finance.

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This year, the UIA World Congress of Architects gathers professionals from the construction industry to the Danish Capital to discuss and promote more sustainable ways of practicing architecture. This edition of the congress, happening between July 2^nd and 6^th, is centered around the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals, highlighted by the overarching theme “Sustainable Futures – Leave no one Behind.” The world’s largest architecture congress offers a vast program of keynote dialogues, new findings presented on the science track, Next Gen sessions, workshops, exhibitions of new materials, and political talks. The packed schedule also includes the Obel Award Talks on the theme “Wellbeing Through Architecture”, Velux Daylight Talks, and Realdania Talks.

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The “Reconstructing the Future for People and Planet” Conference, hosted by Bauhaus Earth and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), has begun at the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens. The conference opened with a speech from Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The extensive program brings together renowned scientists, architects, spatial planners, and policymakers to discuss the transformation of the built environment from a driver of climatic and societal crises into a force for regeneration.

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Harvard GSD is presenting during the month of April 2020, an online series of talks and webinars via Zoom, where attendees can interact and submit questions. Accessible for everyone who registers, the events are also streamed live to the GSD's YouTube page.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named the initial list of speakers for the 2018 Middle East Conference, Polycentric Cities: The Future of Vertical Urbanism. The list features men and women from some of the most influential businesses in the industry, such as HOK, Safdie Architects, Kohn Pederson Fox, Gensler, Perkins+Will, SOM and many more.

The conference will highlight a wide array of subjects and disciplines related to the conference theme, as well as other hot topics in the industry, including smart technologies, modular construction, 3D-printing buildings, net-zero skyscrapers and much more.

Read on for more about Polycentric Cities and the initial list of speakers.

Now in its sixth year in its home city of Prague, reSITE is a conference that has consistently taken a broad view of urban issues, bringing together the largest concentration of the world’s top architects, urbanists, urban planners, landscape architects, and economists under umbrella topics such as Cities in Migration (2016), The Sharing City (2015), and Cities and Landscapes of the New Economy (2014). However, when it comes to events like this, such broad-ranging ambition can be a double-edged sword, flattening and obscuring the nitty gritty details of complex issues. Perhaps reflecting a concern that cities and the challenges they face be seen in full, reSITE 2017’s chosen theme was In/Visible City.

That particular lens reflects a shift in recent years for events such as this to bring into focus that which has typically remained firmly out of view: infrastructure. An allusion to the technical was manifest in the conference’s visual identity: a human heart, with pipe-like arteries and vegetation growing in between the cracks. The heart is to the body like infrastructure is to the city – but just as the body is much more than its circulatory system, the infrastructure cities depend upon is not limited to the obvious, billion-dollar construction projects that make headlines. Urban infrastructure spans all scales and numerous disciplines, ranging from design details to the small print in city policy. In/visible City brought forth the invisible features that give shape to the visible city demonstrating that cultural vitality, social fabric and citizen participation are infrastructural as well.

Last month the Norman Foster Foundation, created to promote "interdisciplinary thinking and research to help up-and-coming architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future," coincided the opening of its new Madrid-based headquarters with an international conference. Future is Now pulled together a broad collection of professionals—including Sir Jonathan Ive, Marc Newson, Olafur Eliasson, Maya Lin, Alejandro Aravena, and Luis Fernández-Galian—who addressed an audience of 1,800 (including 1,100 students) in the Spanish capital's Royal Theater.

Watch the conference in its entirety, or read a summary, after the break.

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Aerial Futures, Grounded Visions: Shaping the Airport Terminal of Tomorrow was a two-day symposium held in October 2016 as part of the European Cultural Center's collateral event at the 2016 Venice Biennale. It encouraged discussion about the future of air travel from the perspectives of architecture, design, technology, culture and user experience. The event featured presentations and discussions by the likes of airport architect Curtis Fentress, Nelly Ben Yahoun, Donald Albrecht, Director of the Museum of the City of New York; Anna Gasco, post-doctoral researcher at the ETH-Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore; Jonathan Ledgard, co-founder of the Droneport Project; and Ashok Raiji, Principal at Arup New York.

The After Belonging Agency, the curatorial team behind the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale (OAT), have revealed sixteen speakers who will present at the event's central conference at the Oslo Opera House this coming September. Atelier Bow-Wow, Snøhetta alongside a number of other academics, practitioners and decision-makers will come together to "address architecture’s relation to current pressing questions such as refugeeism, migration and homelessness, new mediated forms of domesticity and foreignness, environmental displacements, tourism, and the technologies and economies of sharing."

Monocle, a briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design, was founded by in 2007 by Tyler Brûlé, the former Editor-in-Chief of Wallpaper*. With over thirty correspondents working around the world, the magazine also has local bureaux in Tokyo, New York City, Hong Kong, Zürich, Toronto, Istanbul and Singapore. This month saw the publication host their inaugural international conference, centering on the enduring theme that has preoccupied the magazine since launch: Quality of Life.

Set against the backdrop of Portugal's capital, Lisbon, the event was hosted by Brûlé alongside editors Andrew Tuck, Robert Bound, Sophie Grove and Steve Bloomfield. The opinions of twenty-three internationally renowned speakers―including Martin Roth (Director of London's Victoria & Albert Museum), Taco Dibbits (of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum) and Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, alongside the Mayors of Oslo and Porto―were keenly listened to by 160 delegates who had traveled from across the world. The points for discussion allowed for a breadth of discourse that spanned housing and urbanism, to explorations of the 'high street' and the significance of the museum in the contemporary city. The thematic scope of these conversations made them accessible, inspirational and, more importantly, both relevant and widely applicable.