Transformation Strategies: European Architecture as Caregiver
With more than 70% of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050, Europe has been rethinking the way habitats are designed and managed taking into account its people, history, geography and global political economy. Climate change, pollution, digitalization and demographic explosion are also, maybe more than ever, a global threat that endangers the planet, its limited natural resources and in consequence our wellbeing.
Buildings and infrastructures are responsible for at least 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions and architecture must support the rethinking and replanning of Europe in such a way that it prioritises the environment through a cultural project in which design and sustainability are indissociable. The European Green Deal aims at transforming the European Union into the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 while decoupling economic growth from resource use and leaving no person and no place behind. To do so, its cultural component, the New European Bauhaus movement, is creating bridges between the world of science and technology and the world of art and culture in order to combine sustainability with aesthetics, affordability and inclusion.
The exhibition analyses these challenges through examples of excellent architectural transformations carried out in Europe and that different juries of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture 7 Mies van der Rohe Awards have highlighted.
The Fundació Mies van der Rohe, together with the European Union as an official participant at the Expo 2020 Dubai, presents the round table “Transformation Strategies” at the Ireland Pavilion of the Expo 2020 Dubai UAE. A proposal in the framework of the exhibition “Transformation Strategies. European Architecture as Caregiver” that has been possible through the Creative Europe program, which analizes these challenges through examples of excellent architectural transformations that have been carried out in Europe and that have been highlighted by different juries of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.
Three exceptional participants, experts in political relationships between the United Arab Emirates and Europe, architecture and architectural theory and curatorship, will share their points of view on how transformation is an essential way to reduce our footprint on the planet. The collaboration between the EU and the United Arab Emirates on the Green transition towards COP28 in Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s own 2050 net-zero carbon objective will help further understand how different parts of the world are working towards common goals.
ROUND TABLE 17-12-2021, 19:00h (GMT+4)
Emil Paulsen, Diplomat at EU Delegation to the United Arab Emirates.
Sumaya Dabbagh, architect and founder of Dabbagh Architects in Dubai.
Gary Boyd, architect, lecturer at Queens University, and curator.
Moderated by Ivan Blasi, curator of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.
