Programme
The Challenge launched in 2021 with an online programme of webinars, interviews, Q&A sessions, and spotlighted case studies from around the world.
Sessions in the online programme will be held live until January 2023, and will be free and open to everyone. Certificates will be awarded to those who take part in at least four sessions in the online programme.
Upcoming Q&A Drop-In Sessions on 29 Nov., 7 Dec., and 17 Jan.
Please see ‘Workshops’ for more information.
Past Sessions
Session 1 (Launch): Architecture’s Responsibility and Opportunity
This session sets the scene, demonstrating the scope of the challenge considering up to 40% of global carbon emissions are directly and indirectly influenced by built environment sectors and the opportunity this represents for those designing and building to be part of the solution to the climate crisis – providing better homes, shelters, houses, and housing in the process.
View the session recording
Speakers:
Elsie Owusu, Eric J. Cesal, Mina Hasman, Yasmeen Lari
Session 2: Vernacular, Traditional, Local, Indigenous
For millennia, our planet has played host to many hundreds of methods of building structures for people to live and meet in and around. These methods have been adapted over generations, developing from local factors such as skills, materials, and climates.
In 2021, there is increasing recognition of the wisdom and relevance embodied in vernacular, traditional, local, and indigenous methods of building, which work with nature rather than against it. This session will demonstrate (a small fraction of) the extraordinary diversity of the world’s building cultures, and the role the knowledge held within them must play in a sustainable built future.
View the session recording
Speakers
Manalee Nanavati, Ellen Buttrose, Professor Marcel Vellinga, Ángela Calvo García
Session 3: Difficult Questions
The third webinar in the Architecture Challenge programme focuses on unpicking some of the difficult questions that come hand-in-hand with any discussion of the future sustainability of the built environment. This session will feature four speakers answering tough questions and giving their thoughts and perspectives on issues such as what ‘better building’ should mean, what it could look like, and what currently makes it complicated or impossible in many contexts around the world.
Supply chains, the definition of a ‘natural’ material, carbon calculators, and construction standards will all be on the agenda. We will also look at questions relating to responsibility, and who holds it. Where should we start making changes? Can time-tested, zero-carbon, local design solutions be adapted internationally and at scale? How can building regulations accommodate flexible approaches that put people and planet at the forefront of the design process?
View the session recording
Speakers:
Andrew Coates, Dr Hans Friederich, Rebecca Reubens, Jane Anderson
Session 4: Material Matters
For the fourth session in INTBAU’s Architecture Challenge programme, we will hear from four experts about why ‘Material Matters’. Our panel will examine four natural (and ‘natural’) building materials, outlining the materials’ potential uses and abuses as well as their aesthetic and health impacts, and responding to some of the difficult questions surrounding the future of supply chains and provenance.
View the session recording
Speakers
Kiran Pereira, Jez Ralph, Toby Pear, Kathryn Larsen
Session 5: Material Matters 2
For the fifth session and the second materials instalment in INTBAU’s Architecture Challenge programme, we will hear from four experts about why ‘Material Matters’. Our panel will examine four natural (and ‘natural’) building materials, outlining the materials’ potential uses and abuses as well as their aesthetic and health impacts, and responding to some of the difficult questions surrounding the future of supply chains and provenance
View the session recording
Speakers:
David Trujillo, Mattie Mead, Andrew Evans, Phil Christopher
Session 6: Homes, Shelters, Houses, Housing
Our planet is host to an extraordinary diversity of building traditions, which in turn shape the shelters that keep us safe from the elements. As we progress further into the decade of action towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the world seems to have an equal number and variety of shortages and crises relating to housing and the places we call home. Whether problems relate to access, quantity, or quality, too many of us are without resilient and adaptable houses.
This session will focus on the subject at the heart of the INTBAU Architecture Challenge: homes, shelters, houses, and housing. Speakers will set the global scene, and will provide case studies to demonstrate how shortages and crises can be addressed.
View the session recording
Speakers:
Orna Rosenfeld, Marianne Cusato, Michael Hailegebriel and Ben Bolgar.
Session 7: The Urban and the Rural
Our urban areas are expected to grow one and a half times by 2045, to over six billion city dwellers – with developed land projected to triple. This rapid urbanisation is also intrinsically linked to rural depopulation in many towns and villages across the globe. This talk will explore the scale, variety and nature of the challenges of designing for dense urban areas and for sparsely populated rural ones. Speakers will dwell on the context of the ongoing pandemic, and pose the question: does that fact that the countryside, with the space, and locally accessible natural materials it provides, render it a more sustainable site in which to build?
Speakers: Antonio Jimenez Martinez, Filip Gawliński, Patrick Lamson-Hall, Dr Alex Arnall
View the session recording
