Paul Karakusevic, Joan Clos, Sergio Magalhaes, Sara Topelson, Lluis de Mello and Martha Thorne, first speakers confirmed for the 2022 UIA International Forum
- Tickets are now on sale to attend the 2022 UIA International Forum ‘Affordable Housing Activation: Removing Barriers’ to be held in Madrid, 18-20 May.
- More than 60 internationally renowned speakers will reflect on the accessibility of housing, turning Madrid into the epicentre of the global debate with the aim of moving towards a multilateral Declaration.
- The congress is promoting a collaborative and innovative working framework by activating the first global platform of content, data and success stories on housing (ahamadrid.com) promoted by international benchmark stakeholders and organisations which will use artificial intelligence for the management of content and dynamic interactive maps for the visualisation of data.
- The 2022 UIA International Forum is promoted by the Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España (CSCAE) and has the support of the Government of Spain, the Autonomous Community of Madrid and Madrid City Council, as well as the collaboration of UN-Habitat and the support of the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM).
Madrid, 2 March 2022. The 2022 UIA International Forum ‘Affordable Housing Activation: Removing Barriers’ has confirmed the first speakers on the same day that tickets to the event go on sale. These can be purchased through www.ahamadrid.com. More than 60 international experts of the stature of Joan Clos, Paul Karakusevic, Lluis de Mello, Sergio Magalhaes, Sara Topelson, Martha Thorne, Alfonso Vegara, Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, Richard Sennett and Reinhart Goethert will reflect on the accessibility of housing from 18 to 20 May in Madrid, putting the Spanish capital front and centre in the global debate on decent and adequate housing, with the aim of moving towards a multilateral Declaration.
Marta Vall-llosera, president of CSCAE, the driving force behind the Forum and winner of the bid over Saudi Arabia in 2019, said: “The participation of the world’s most renowned experts in the 2022 UIA International Forum will raise awareness of the right to decent and adequate housing together with the need for environmental, economic and social sustainability, promoting a collaborative and innovative working framework. The Forum will allow us to advance in the search for solutions to this challenge together.”
Angela Balldellou, executive director of the AHA Forum, added: “The 2022 UIA International Forum is much more than an event. We have evolved to a 21st century format that will foster synergies and cooperation. We are creating the first digital platform for content related to housing accessibility by promoting the organisation of events around the world and the collection and analysis of success stories and global databases, both official and unofficial, which will lay the foundations for seeking global solutions, sharing knowledge and enabling debates to advance solutions to one of the major problems we face in the 21st century. This will also help us to take on the commitments needed to face all the other simultaneous global crises so that we can develop an integrated strategy.”
The debate: barriers to accessing decent housing
Madrid will lead the international debate to address the global problem of access to housing with the celebration of the 2022 UIA International Forum. Under the title ‘Affordable Housing Activation: Removing Barriers’, the event aims to foster international collaboration, creating a collaborative, innovative, cutting edge and paradigmatic framework that will enable the sharing of cases and visions from the professional perspectives involved across the process of design, financing, management and production of affordable housing and the policies and regulations that facilitate it, analysing and synthesising global data and the imbalances to be corrected to generate an adequate supply to meet demand, in order to determine the current state of access to housing and promote possible plans of action in the medium and long term. All of this with an inclusive, diverse, analytical, disciplined and cross-cutting approach.
The Forum’s Advisory Board, with more than 40 professionals from the five continents, chaired by Joan Clos, has identified the six main barriers that prevent access to affordable, decent and adequate housing. These six barriers, set out with international precedents in a Reference document, structure the Madrid programme and the themes around which the information and tools of the web platform will be concentrated.
The six barriers summarise the keys to implementing this universal right, which requires the consensus of diverse stakeholders and a collective and complex effort. For this reason, Affordable Housing Activation (AHA) is a call to action and aims to launch a global movement, with the capacity to involve society in the face of the enormous challenge that housing represents, taking on board the fact that specific actions will have to be resolved and implemented on a local scale, but that global knowledge can facilitate solutions that have already proven to be effective in other contexts.
The first global platform for housing accessibility related content
The 2022 UIA International Forum will be an event with maximum international impact whose objective is to contribute to improving access to affordable, decent and adequate housing around the world, through the generation of global networks and alliances that promote shared knowledge. To this end, the Forum has created the first global platform for content related to housing accessibility with the participation of international experts in the fields of architecture, governance, energy, engineering, economics, urban planning, environment, sociology, design, technology and innovation.
The website www.ahamadrid.com will serve as a platform for sharing exemplary cases studies and specific visions arising from the analysis of the barriers that hinder access to housing. In this sense, the initiative seeks solutions and comprehensive views from architecture and urban planning capable of “knitting together” an approach that can overcome the barriers. The aim is to involve all stakeholders with the capacity to mark long-term lines of action around a future international agreement with the maximum backing of organisations, governments, entities and institutions that is capable of concentrating and reaching a consensus on the minimum keys to habitability that go hand in hand with sustainability.
About the International Union of Architects (UIA)
The UIA emerged as a federation of organizations in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1948. It currently has 104 member sections, representing 115 countries and more than 1,500,000 architects worldwide, thus making it the international organization with the greatest capacity for global influence in terms of Architecture and one of the most influential organizations in urban, design and heritage issues; it connects all its commitments and work with international agendas and sustainability. UIA forums were established to create conferences on the major challenges that the profession has to face and to connect architecture with other disciplines and perspectives in the resolution of shared challenges. For more information www.uia-architectes.org
About the Consejo Superior de Colegios de Arquitectos de España (CSCAE)
Created in 1931, the CSCAE brings together all the colleges of architects in Spain for the defence of architecture and the achievement of general common goals. It represents the colleges and the more than 47,000 member professionals who practise architecture in Spain before public and private corporations and international bodies.
For more information www.cscae.com
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