UIA XXII World Congress of Architecture: Worlds Meeting

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With some exceptions, most of the excerpts below contain a belief and a desire for a better world, in which a socially responsible, ecological and responsive architecture engages with the real world. These are architects that talk about architecture in an optimistic manner, in which architecture questions the present, performs ethically, with compassion and solidarity, while offering a way forward to “change the status quo”.

Environmental sustainability - by itself, disengaged from social realities - also appeared. As if the token veil of environmental sustainability could make up for the absence of opinion, social and holistic engagement with the world issues and its causes. To these “stars”, environmentalism is not more than a vehicle, a veneer. Appearing as if they care, these architects reach the real world without committing to it – how useless.
Fortunately, these were not majority in Istanbul.


Urban Worlds Meeting
by Alison B. Snyder
From: ArchitectureWeek

The UIA XXII World Congress of Architecture was held in the historic city of Istanbul, Turkey in July 2005. The week-long conference, with the theme Cities: the Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS, stimulated ideas about designer responsibility and about how new architecture might be conceived for the 21st century.

Suha Ozkan, the congress president and secretary general for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, set the context. He suggested: "a pluralist world is emerging where humanity's differences are no longer sources of animosity or atrocities... architecture, as the profession that shapes our built environment, has an important ethical role, which brings with it enormous responsibility."

UIA president, Jamie Lerner of Brazil, recognizing political realities, observed, "the city in this polarized world is the way to make solidarity." He commented on educational and professional dichotomies: "we are proud of our 'star architects,' but we need a constellation of designers to work towards quality of life, dignity, mobility, sustainability, and solidarity."

Throughout the UIA 2005 Istanbul World Congress, different forms of sustainability, community planning, economics, and a can-do/ must-do attitude were often put forth as a means to educate and to proactively encourage the students of architecture, design, and city planning to analyze their education, and to take an energetic part in working to shift the status quo.
(....)
Peter Eisenman identified several political and social rifts of the 20th century and suggested how they corresponded with major periods of architectural design. "Modern architecture was a critique of then existing architecture, abstraction initiated the movement of the past into the future... post-modernism was based on capital and represented change for the sake of change... not a change in social order."
(....)
After a community review of the student proposals, there was a public design review during which distinguished jurors offered several cautions. What is to be done about the gentrification that was sure to follow neighborhood improvements? Have the students realized that all architecture and planning is political? And what would the next steps be?
Throughout the UIA 2005 Istanbul World Congress, different forms of sustainability, community planning, economics, and a can-do/ must-do attitude were often put forth as a means to educate and to proactively encourage the students of architecture, design, and city planning to analyze their education, and to take an energetic part in working to shift the status quo.

The conference celebrated both historic buildings and urban aesthetics, as well as theories for sustaining cities and new ideas for maintaining social justice and actively maintaining a global discourse about the quality of our surroundings. (...)

continue reading: http://www.archweek.com/2005/0824/news_1-1.html