Symposium: Sustainable Futures

The Royal Danish Academy - Architecture, Design, Conservation invites to an international online symposium, where leading researchers, practitioners and thinkers will discuss how architectural research can direct and support the achieving of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This international symposium invites leading researchers, practitioners and thinkers to discuss how architectural research can direct and support the achieving of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). It asks how is sustainability conceived and incorporated into architectural practice, and how can a better understanding of key concepts and drivers better inform design agency.

Context
Society finds itself in a situation of crisis. The difficult challenges we stand before as we enter an era of climate emergency and biodiversity loss, coupled with exponential population growth, accelerated urbanisation and related depletion of resources, escalated social division and inequality are putting unprecedented pressures on the way we live and how we see our future. At this crucial moment, the defining question for architects, urban designers and landscape architects remains: what are the radical measures by which we affect a step change in the way we discuss, design and build our societies.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a shared effort to do this. They aim to create a framework by which efforts across society can be synergised to achieve new models of development. The vision for the SDGs is to eliminate poverty while also ensuring a secure, healthy and resourceful future for humans and the planet while promoting peace and prosperity. Architecture is uniquely positioned to institute change through its ability to affect the thoughts, lives and habits of the people who use it. Architecture affects the way we adapt to a changing environment, the way we evaluate environmental impacts of our consumption and change our production patterns and the way we shape our societies to foster inclusivity and social equality, thus forming concrete and instrumentalised ways of the achieving of the SDGs.

However, at present, none of the UN SDGs declare targets that directly articulate the role of architecture as a driver for change nor indicators that evaluate its results. It is clear that governance does not truly understand the agency and potential of the field’s important contribution. Architecture does. Nationally and internationally across practice and academia we see a great volume of research and creative practice developing sustainable solutions. However, the present field is exploded and in need of an overarching conceptual framework able to address the broad scope of the SDGs, challenge preconceptions and connect efforts.

SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME (CPH time zone)

13:20 - 13:30
Welcome & assembly              

13:30 - 13:45
Introduction to symposium: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Martin Tamke              

Session 1: Frameworks - global perspectives and critical frameworks:                

13:45 - 14:15
Chris Luebkeman // Leader of the Strategic Foresight Hub, ETH Zurich         

14:15 - 14:45
Sandi Hilal // Co-founder of Campus in Camps // Co Founder of DAAR - Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency                         

14:45 - 15:00
Discussion / Q&A                      

Session 2: technologies, social dimension, philosophy:             

15:05 - 15:10
Intro: MT          

15:15 - 15:45
Anne Beim // Professor at the Center for Industrialised Architecture / the Royal Danish Academy - Architecture 

15:45 - 16:15
Anna Rubbo // Research Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia, University’s Earth Institute               

16:15 - 16:30
Discussion / Q&A                      

Session 3: perspectives:             

16:35 - 16:40    
Intro: MT          

16:35 - 17:05    
Timothy Morton // Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University

17:05 - 17:30    
Discussion / Q&A                      

17:30               
Closure