XXIII UIA WORLD CONGRESS – TRANSMITTING ARCHITECTURE
Text by: Mahrukh Sayem
Photography by: Ar. M Sayem Ghayur
To witness a unique sense of familiarity amongst strangers in an unknown place, new to experience and discover, one can conjure up the image of the Italian city of Turin as the host city of the International Union of Architects, UIA World Congress. A place where a remarkable fraternity of architects was successfully created by the event, as it brought them together and bonded them with their common aspirations and challenges.
With the colorful name tags and Turin maps, to the UIA paper handbags being carried by participants filling every street and every corner of the city, it was remarkable to actually live the sense of belongingness so aptly developed. It was the 23rd session of the UIA World Congress that every three years, provides a platform for architects across the globe to discuss their profession and concerned issues, irrespective of their representative nation, ideology or race.
The UIA was actually a phenomenon of Architect Pierre Vago, who in 1946 conceptualized his idea that architectural profession should be united while breaking all ideological barriers. He hoped to achieve a balanced approach, bearing in mind a body representing the “architects’ associations” rather than “nation states”. The UIA was then, formally found with its first ever session in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 28th June 1948, supported and attended by over 500 architects. It focused on targeting the architects’ role in dimensions such as town planning, society, state and industrialization.
To support the UIA in its aim to help architects contribute to the environment in a constructive manner, 27 countries initially signed an agreement with the organization. Today, the UIA has almost 120 member countries that form an extensive network of architects and associations, coming together to develop the profession further; Pakistan being one of them.
Italy, with its rich architectural and cultural heritage, would seem as an obvious choice for an architectural conference of a scale as massive as the UIA. On the contrary though, bids from Venice and Florence to host the Congress had been previously rejected in the past.
This time however, in the course of preparations to hold the 2006 Winter Olympics, Turin had undergone a complete relaunch. With this added advantage in mind, the city’s Council of Architects proposed to bid for the 2008 UIA Congress. In the face of strong competition from cities such as Tokyo, Seville and Bussan, Turin needed a sound marketing strategy to achieve the said honour.
With the backing of a hefty budget, and multiple state councils, Turin was represented with an emphasis on its urban regeneration program. Finally, the theme of the Congress, “Transmitting Architecture” stirred the ultimate excitement that brought the whole globe flocking to the passionate city of Torino.
Held at the Lingoto Fiere and the Palavela, and scheduled from June 29th till July 3rd, the Congress was an insightful collection of lectures, exhibits, speeches, with a tinge of entertainment provided by the opening ceremony, and finally the closing. For that matter it was actively attended by not only practicing architects and intellectuals, but also students, faculty members, press and they too were accompanied by people from nearly all walks of life, simply interested in the event.
The opening ceremony was the highlight of the first day, from the choice of its location to the experience more or less every participant went through. It also marked the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the UIA. The grandiosity of the venue, the Royal palace of the La Venaria Reale, its beauty and magnitude was substantial to leave one overwhelmed and more than that, just plain stunned. The impact was greater perhaps because it gave the tourist participants the first exposure to what exactly the city beheld, out of the exhibition complex, the Lingotto.
Getting to the venue gave everyone a more-than-at-the-moment required tour of the city. The arranged transportation fell short for the excessively attended Congress. And the Venaria was too far to be comfortably reached independently by public transport, which remained otherwise highly convenient. It didn’t help much that the ceremony was scheduled for 7pm and it also ended up pouring with utmost intensity at the said hour, making the journey more of an uncalled adventure.
Once there the sight that greeted made it seem all worth the while. The Royal palace with its expansive piazza, the Corte d’Onore had been set up complete with a stage, food and drink stalls, and participants moved about admiring the palace within, the Reggia di Diana. The President of the UIA, Gaetan Siew, gave his official address, followed by welcoming speeches by other prominent officials. Celebration and festivity were the order of the day, marked by a spectacular play of water fountains amidst the piazza Corte d’Onore.
From June 30th began the series of lectures and exhibits enough to appease the architectural appetite of all. The main theme of the congress, “transmitting architecture” gave forth a dual meaning phenomenon. It represented architecture as a transmitting entity, an antenna which broadcasts the message of urban democracy and communicates its social and design action. Simultaneously it collects emerging trends expressed by the society and therefore is recognized for the values it ends up transmitting.
The lectures and sessions were broadly categorized under three prominent heads: culture, democracy and hope. While culturally sustainable architecture reminded the architects to realize the need to restore and promote traditional heritage passed on over time to the present, a democratic approach encouraged the production of architecture that would be communal, rather than creating an individualistic entity. The resultant architecture would then be conscious of its impact on the environment, and thus challenged to transform itself to bring about positive progressive changes in the future.
In this way, not only did the categorization define a course for the conference to follow, it also put forward the pillars of responsible and sustainable architecture, and thus the ethical obligations for all architects. Prominent participant speakers addressed the said issues and defined probable approaches to achieve the desired goals.
The Congress took off on its first day, highlighting topics that came under the cultural definition. Separate sessions and talks discussed the roots of architecture, the role of architectural language in impacting the environment, the creativity and professional requirements of architects to represent their ideas and the context they needed to work in. Further discussions addressed the ability of architecture to transmit industrial cities, landscapes, and its communication through newspapers and magazines.
A specialist session represented an East African city, Asmara as a case study to observe the impact of contemporary politics and culture on early modernist architecture. Interactive workshops and gatherings were held to stimulate debate on importance of sport and leisure, soft-stone origami and material encountered creativity.
The catch of the day was a specialist session titled Waterfront Architecture, due to be addressed by Jean Nouvel and Foster & Partners amongst other prominent presenters. The discussion was organized to be held in a hall with a limited capacity of 210 seats, leaving the students and participants struggling to find space on the floor, having crossed the volunteers guarding the hall doors. Sensibly enough the session was moved to a slightly bigger hall, offering 500 seats, which too was unfortunately full within seconds. In the end the two prominent architects remained absent while the extra eager listeners were sent out of the hall.
The second day took up the democratic approach, with sessions stressing the importance of public participation in territorial transformation processes, developing slums, and the complexities involved in architectural projects. Another session was set to question the role of architecture in urban and territorial crisis, while others highlighted the importance of libraries as prominent urban loci, and the relationship between architecture and real estate.
Further topics sought to promote social housing in the face of increasing poverty, sustainable development and town planning, world urbanization and the architect’s role as a mediator in the processes of urban and territorial transformations. The workshop of the day aimed to propose a general overview of the works of architects working with aluminium laminates, innovatively treated with color applications and used in contemporary construction.
The third day was scheduled to deliver special lectures by architects Peter Eisenman, Dominique Perrault and a key note speech by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus. The day’s sessions were addressed under the thematic concept of practicing environment friendly architecture with the hope to ensure a sustainable future. The concept of imagination was brought under discussion, actively assisted by technological advancements, to build for the future with greater opportunities and possibilities.
Innovative materials, systems and techniques contributing to a better environment, future concepts for landscapes, sustainable housing, buildings and cities and their concerned implications, strategies and plans were also part of the third day agenda. Keeping in sync with the theme of the day, that being hope for a sustainable future, further sessions were held on UIA’s action plan between 2008 and 2011, the architecture and art of the third millennium cities, transmitting updated architecture and creating universal and inclusive designs that frees architecture of mere monumentality.
A ceremony to award the best doctoral thesis in selected fields of architecture, town planning and restoration was also scheduled for the same day. A grand Gold Medals award ceremony was also organized, complete with cocktails and a special performance by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della Rai, dedicated for the participants of the UIA Congress.
Besides delivering the prestigious UIA gold medal to Teodoro Gonzalez De Leon from Mexico, winners of the Info Point and Totem competitions for students were also awarded in the ceremony, amongst other UIA prizes.
As the Congress inched closer to its end, on the fourth and final day, the UIA corporate partners were to invite famous architects to illustrate through their work the process of integrating industrial solutions to their respective project’s design process. A plenary discussion was also planned to discuss the manifesto of Turin, followed by a round table meeting amongst architects and decision makers to join hands in committing themselves for responsible and sustainable architecture.
A handover ceremony was scheduled to bring the architectural extravaganza to an end. An event was organized to officially announce Tokyo as the host city for the next UIA World Congress for 2011. Executive members of the UIA and the Mayor of Turin were listed to hand over the honor to representatives of the Tokyo metropolitan government.
Apart from the daily planned talks and plenary sessions, institutional and cultural exhibitions had also been set up in the Lingotto exhibition halls. Parallel trade fairs, the Architex Textile Expo and Architektonica also remained scheduled throughout the Congress days. The extent to which the Congress had to offer became therefore, at times a bit too much for the participants to handle. Not only had they to choose from a long list of equally interesting sessions topics, often compromising on one to attend the other, they also had to assess the time on their hands and the multi room, multi floor exhibits to explore.
In addition to these activities, each of the Congress days had been assigned to offer press conference and interview opportunities for prominent architects and speakers, including Dominque Perrault, Muhammad Yunus and Peter Eisenman. In the face of the multi ethnic partciaption of the event, the communication barrier was pertinently overcome by interpretations available in multiple languages.
The UIA World Congress aimed to bring together people from different regions, cultures and disciplines, to contribute their ideas and hear from others, to learn and teach, explore and discover at the same time. It was hoped to create a milestone in the process of developing a conscience for architecture, to adhere to the principals of sustainability. It was an aspiration to create a moment for architecture, to create and transmit inspirations and to produce a comprehensive architectural experience.
Photography by: Ar. M Sayem Ghayur
To witness a unique sense of familiarity amongst strangers in an unknown place, new to experience and discover, one can conjure up the image of the Italian city of Turin as the host city of the International Union of Architects, UIA World Congress. A place where a remarkable fraternity of architects was successfully created by the event, as it brought them together and bonded them with their common aspirations and challenges.
With the colorful name tags and Turin maps, to the UIA paper handbags being carried by participants filling every street and every corner of the city, it was remarkable to actually live the sense of belongingness so aptly developed. It was the 23rd session of the UIA World Congress that every three years, provides a platform for architects across the globe to discuss their profession and concerned issues, irrespective of their representative nation, ideology or race.
The UIA was actually a phenomenon of Architect Pierre Vago, who in 1946 conceptualized his idea that architectural profession should be united while breaking all ideological barriers. He hoped to achieve a balanced approach, bearing in mind a body representing the “architects’ associations” rather than “nation states”. The UIA was then, formally found with its first ever session in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 28th June 1948, supported and attended by over 500 architects. It focused on targeting the architects’ role in dimensions such as town planning, society, state and industrialization.
To support the UIA in its aim to help architects contribute to the environment in a constructive manner, 27 countries initially signed an agreement with the organization. Today, the UIA has almost 120 member countries that form an extensive network of architects and associations, coming together to develop the profession further; Pakistan being one of them.
Italy, with its rich architectural and cultural heritage, would seem as an obvious choice for an architectural conference of a scale as massive as the UIA. On the contrary though, bids from Venice and Florence to host the Congress had been previously rejected in the past.
This time however, in the course of preparations to hold the 2006 Winter Olympics, Turin had undergone a complete relaunch. With this added advantage in mind, the city’s Council of Architects proposed to bid for the 2008 UIA Congress. In the face of strong competition from cities such as Tokyo, Seville and Bussan, Turin needed a sound marketing strategy to achieve the said honour.
With the backing of a hefty budget, and multiple state councils, Turin was represented with an emphasis on its urban regeneration program. Finally, the theme of the Congress, “Transmitting Architecture” stirred the ultimate excitement that brought the whole globe flocking to the passionate city of Torino.
Held at the Lingoto Fiere and the Palavela, and scheduled from June 29th till July 3rd, the Congress was an insightful collection of lectures, exhibits, speeches, with a tinge of entertainment provided by the opening ceremony, and finally the closing. For that matter it was actively attended by not only practicing architects and intellectuals, but also students, faculty members, press and they too were accompanied by people from nearly all walks of life, simply interested in the event.
The opening ceremony was the highlight of the first day, from the choice of its location to the experience more or less every participant went through. It also marked the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the UIA. The grandiosity of the venue, the Royal palace of the La Venaria Reale, its beauty and magnitude was substantial to leave one overwhelmed and more than that, just plain stunned. The impact was greater perhaps because it gave the tourist participants the first exposure to what exactly the city beheld, out of the exhibition complex, the Lingotto.
Getting to the venue gave everyone a more-than-at-the-moment required tour of the city. The arranged transportation fell short for the excessively attended Congress. And the Venaria was too far to be comfortably reached independently by public transport, which remained otherwise highly convenient. It didn’t help much that the ceremony was scheduled for 7pm and it also ended up pouring with utmost intensity at the said hour, making the journey more of an uncalled adventure.
Once there the sight that greeted made it seem all worth the while. The Royal palace with its expansive piazza, the Corte d’Onore had been set up complete with a stage, food and drink stalls, and participants moved about admiring the palace within, the Reggia di Diana. The President of the UIA, Gaetan Siew, gave his official address, followed by welcoming speeches by other prominent officials. Celebration and festivity were the order of the day, marked by a spectacular play of water fountains amidst the piazza Corte d’Onore.
From June 30th began the series of lectures and exhibits enough to appease the architectural appetite of all. The main theme of the congress, “transmitting architecture” gave forth a dual meaning phenomenon. It represented architecture as a transmitting entity, an antenna which broadcasts the message of urban democracy and communicates its social and design action. Simultaneously it collects emerging trends expressed by the society and therefore is recognized for the values it ends up transmitting.
The lectures and sessions were broadly categorized under three prominent heads: culture, democracy and hope. While culturally sustainable architecture reminded the architects to realize the need to restore and promote traditional heritage passed on over time to the present, a democratic approach encouraged the production of architecture that would be communal, rather than creating an individualistic entity. The resultant architecture would then be conscious of its impact on the environment, and thus challenged to transform itself to bring about positive progressive changes in the future.
In this way, not only did the categorization define a course for the conference to follow, it also put forward the pillars of responsible and sustainable architecture, and thus the ethical obligations for all architects. Prominent participant speakers addressed the said issues and defined probable approaches to achieve the desired goals.
The Congress took off on its first day, highlighting topics that came under the cultural definition. Separate sessions and talks discussed the roots of architecture, the role of architectural language in impacting the environment, the creativity and professional requirements of architects to represent their ideas and the context they needed to work in. Further discussions addressed the ability of architecture to transmit industrial cities, landscapes, and its communication through newspapers and magazines.
A specialist session represented an East African city, Asmara as a case study to observe the impact of contemporary politics and culture on early modernist architecture. Interactive workshops and gatherings were held to stimulate debate on importance of sport and leisure, soft-stone origami and material encountered creativity.
The catch of the day was a specialist session titled Waterfront Architecture, due to be addressed by Jean Nouvel and Foster & Partners amongst other prominent presenters. The discussion was organized to be held in a hall with a limited capacity of 210 seats, leaving the students and participants struggling to find space on the floor, having crossed the volunteers guarding the hall doors. Sensibly enough the session was moved to a slightly bigger hall, offering 500 seats, which too was unfortunately full within seconds. In the end the two prominent architects remained absent while the extra eager listeners were sent out of the hall.
The second day took up the democratic approach, with sessions stressing the importance of public participation in territorial transformation processes, developing slums, and the complexities involved in architectural projects. Another session was set to question the role of architecture in urban and territorial crisis, while others highlighted the importance of libraries as prominent urban loci, and the relationship between architecture and real estate.
Further topics sought to promote social housing in the face of increasing poverty, sustainable development and town planning, world urbanization and the architect’s role as a mediator in the processes of urban and territorial transformations. The workshop of the day aimed to propose a general overview of the works of architects working with aluminium laminates, innovatively treated with color applications and used in contemporary construction.
The third day was scheduled to deliver special lectures by architects Peter Eisenman, Dominique Perrault and a key note speech by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus. The day’s sessions were addressed under the thematic concept of practicing environment friendly architecture with the hope to ensure a sustainable future. The concept of imagination was brought under discussion, actively assisted by technological advancements, to build for the future with greater opportunities and possibilities.
Innovative materials, systems and techniques contributing to a better environment, future concepts for landscapes, sustainable housing, buildings and cities and their concerned implications, strategies and plans were also part of the third day agenda. Keeping in sync with the theme of the day, that being hope for a sustainable future, further sessions were held on UIA’s action plan between 2008 and 2011, the architecture and art of the third millennium cities, transmitting updated architecture and creating universal and inclusive designs that frees architecture of mere monumentality.
A ceremony to award the best doctoral thesis in selected fields of architecture, town planning and restoration was also scheduled for the same day. A grand Gold Medals award ceremony was also organized, complete with cocktails and a special performance by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della Rai, dedicated for the participants of the UIA Congress.
Besides delivering the prestigious UIA gold medal to Teodoro Gonzalez De Leon from Mexico, winners of the Info Point and Totem competitions for students were also awarded in the ceremony, amongst other UIA prizes.
As the Congress inched closer to its end, on the fourth and final day, the UIA corporate partners were to invite famous architects to illustrate through their work the process of integrating industrial solutions to their respective project’s design process. A plenary discussion was also planned to discuss the manifesto of Turin, followed by a round table meeting amongst architects and decision makers to join hands in committing themselves for responsible and sustainable architecture.
A handover ceremony was scheduled to bring the architectural extravaganza to an end. An event was organized to officially announce Tokyo as the host city for the next UIA World Congress for 2011. Executive members of the UIA and the Mayor of Turin were listed to hand over the honor to representatives of the Tokyo metropolitan government.
Apart from the daily planned talks and plenary sessions, institutional and cultural exhibitions had also been set up in the Lingotto exhibition halls. Parallel trade fairs, the Architex Textile Expo and Architektonica also remained scheduled throughout the Congress days. The extent to which the Congress had to offer became therefore, at times a bit too much for the participants to handle. Not only had they to choose from a long list of equally interesting sessions topics, often compromising on one to attend the other, they also had to assess the time on their hands and the multi room, multi floor exhibits to explore.
In addition to these activities, each of the Congress days had been assigned to offer press conference and interview opportunities for prominent architects and speakers, including Dominque Perrault, Muhammad Yunus and Peter Eisenman. In the face of the multi ethnic partciaption of the event, the communication barrier was pertinently overcome by interpretations available in multiple languages.
The UIA World Congress aimed to bring together people from different regions, cultures and disciplines, to contribute their ideas and hear from others, to learn and teach, explore and discover at the same time. It was hoped to create a milestone in the process of developing a conscience for architecture, to adhere to the principals of sustainability. It was an aspiration to create a moment for architecture, to create and transmit inspirations and to produce a comprehensive architectural experience.
0 comments: