The Rebuilding Pavilion

The Rebuilding Pavilion aspires to demonstrate that rebuilding can be done in a way that is holistically sustainable, accessible, collaborative, locally anchored and, not the least, beautiful. 

Rebuilding of the built environment is severely needed in societies facing conflict or natural disasters, be they immediate disasters and devastation, or ongoing irreversible climate change. These built environments are no longer able to protect, support or strengthen their communities and must be rebuilt. Rebuilding sustainable communities require a multi protagonist cast, it is the task and responsibility of all stakeholders in the built environment and beyond. But architecture holds an extraordinary potential to contribute to sustainable rebuilding with care, compassion, and collaboration.

Architects have the abilities and competencies to envision and make tangible a rebuilding that is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. To give form to efforts that meets the needs of the societies in need for rebuilding, strengthens their potential to thrive as communities and is anchored in their respective cultural identities. To participate in a rebuilding that is founded in collaborations across professional, governmental, or cultural boundaries. And to envision a rebuilding that respects the planetary boundaries, demonstrate strategies for a zero-carbon building industry and ensure nature’s biodiversity.

The challenges, we need to address when rebuilding, are on one hand similar to those we must address everywhere when developing the built environment. But one the other, so much more complex when layers of urgency and risk are added. Societies in need of rebuilding are facing pressure and trauma. Urgent needs make communities extremely vulnerable to decisions that are bad for both people and planet. Architecture must strive to balance the required urgent solutions with long term perspectives, and search for alternative sustainable options, that address communities’ immediate needs wholeheartedly without compromising the future.

The Rebuilding Pavilion aspires to demonstrate these alternatives. Rebuilding can be done in a way that is holistically sustainable, accessible, collaborative, locally anchored and, not the least, beautiful. The pavilion and its program will be designed in a collaboration between an international group of people who are each in their own practice and local context deeply engaged in the agenda of sustainable rebuilding.

The pavilion’s purpose is dual. To demonstrate as an actual prototype that a sustainable rebuilding strategy (based on locally available materials, collaboration, and context) is realizable. And through that to expand the global architecture community’s commitment to the rebuilding agenda.

It is the humble hope of the team that the pavilion will contribute to the formulation of a both grounded and ambitious rebuilding strategy, a sustainable strategy that rebuilds not only buildings and infrastructure, but homes, communities, and eco-systems.