The International Manifesto Relay digital publication collects the results of a project carried out by Copenhagen Architecture Festival in collaboration with the UIA2023CPH, the 28th World Congress of the International Union of Architects, which focuses on the theme Sustainable Futures: Leave No One Behind.
Already in 2019, Copenhagen Architecture Festival (CAFx) had an intuition about the potential of the manifesto to stimulate radical imagination and facilitate the dissemination of provoking spatial vision. It explored this through the Manifest Stafet initiative, which, in collaboration with the Denmark’s Academic Architects Association, collected almost 50 manifestos about the societal role of architecture from local researchers and practitioners.
Reiterating this concept on a bigger scale, the International Manifesto Relay gathers proposals, projects, declarations and speculations about the capacity of architecture to create sustainable futures. CAFx invited all Architecture Associations around the world members of the UIA to select practices and researchers from their country of jurisdiction who would like to produce a manifesto on the topic of the UIA 2023 World Congress. More specifically, authors were asked to draw inspiration from the Congress’s Six themes: Design for Climate Adaptation, Design for Rethinking Resources, Design for Resilient Communities, Design for Health, Design for Inclusivity, Design for Partnerships for Change.
In the context of the Congress, each theme is explored by a dedicated Research Panel, which you can read about in this publication. The 45 manifestos here presented each connect to one or more of Six Panels, shedding light on their interconnections.
The International Manifesto Relay can be read fluidly and approached from different angles, depending on your interests. The three-part menu brings you either to the Preface, kindly written by Martha Thorne, Senior Advisor to the Obel Award and Dean of the IE University in Madrid; or to the descriptions of the Research Panels; or to the manifestos themselves, which can be filtered by theme and geographical origin.
Enjoy exploring the manifestos, download them and help us disseminate them: it’s your turn to pass on the baton.