Disaster & Pandemics

The talks will focus on the role and positionality of Architects and Planning Practitioners in preparing for Pandemic Resilient Cities where basics such as access to safe housing, space, clean air, food and water is not considered a privilege but a basic Human Right.

While everyone will be affected by the challenges emerging from the current crisis, the impact is  hitting hard on the most vulnerable ones: the elderly population, migrants, displaced populations, slum dwellers and the so-called ‘low-skilled’ workforce, who rely solely on their everyday income. However, these vulnerabilities aren’t new and were not merely caused by the Pandemic, but gradually accumulated by multiple political, economic, social and spatial factors, that reduced our preparedness for such a scenario and left Millions of people vulnerable to health crises and disasters.

We are sharing the belief that the fields of Architecture and Planning have a high contribution in mitigating the next pandemic and increasing urban resilience. It is for this reason that we are introducing a series of 5 talks to bring experts from the built environment, the health sector and the humanitarian sector into conversation to debate and answer questions around the following topics:

Disasters and Pandemic
Health Infrastructure
Urban living: Density & Pandemics
Human Rights & Contested Cities
resulting in a collectively developed Manifesto on Pandemic-Resilient cities.

2nd phase happened with a half-day seminar in Copenhagen on October 8th 2020 as part of the Copenhagen Architecture Festival. We recorded a five minutes film interviewing three of the four lecturers.