We have reached the limits of our planet and therefore we have no choice but to act now. As architects, we hold both the potential and the responsibility to radically change the way we design and build our physical societies. We hope to use the UIA World Congress in Copenhagen 2023 as a milestone on our common path towards the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Natalie Mossin, President of Congress and Co-Chair of the UIA Commission on the UN Sustainable Development Goals
We are in a decade of urgency and action, and we must use events such as the UIA World Congress 2023 as a forum for change-making on a global stage. The SDGs do not directly address the agency and potentiality of architecture as a contributor to solutions; however, architecture’s inherent multi-disciplinarity and engagement across sectors, positions architectural practices as central facilitators and generators for change across many of the UN SDGs. We, therefore, wish to use the UIA World Congress 2023 as a vehicle to collectively explore and formulate a shared vision for how we as architects and across different contexts and agendas are part of the solution.
Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Martin Tamke, UIA World Congress Scientific Committee
Our Manifesto Relay from 2019 was greatly appreciated by professionals engaged with the built environment in Denmark, and produced a range of inspirational, novel and sometimes provoking statements on architecture’s obligation to address society’s most pressing challenges. To widen the mosaic of voices to a global and multifaceted scale seems as the obvious next step.
Josephine Michau, Festival Director, Copenhagen Architecture Festival
The Manifesto Relay and the Scientific Committee share the vision of bringing together different voices with different perspectives from different situations, creating a mosaic and proposing a space where complexity and contradictions can be shared, debated and investigated. We believe this participatory form of communication that reaches across positions, perspectives and geographies is necessary for the ongoing process of collective formulations of architecture’s contribution to the fulfillment of the UN SDGs. We really love the expansion of the collective approach of the Manifesto Relay, bridging across industry and research, and we are certain that it will present a powerful call for action and unison.
Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Martin Tamke, the UIA Scientific Committee