A Brief Story Of Some Ideas

by Jorge Lobos (Punta Arenas Chile, 1961) Alghero November 2007, Copenhagen-Brede 11th April 2020

an international laboratory of
applied research about Architecture and Human Rights

The concepts that I will show in this text should have emerged at the same time in other places around the world, that is the general logic of the human evolution, but I do not know where neither who has been thinking the same that I/we. For that reason, I will refer to my/our personal experience and the people that I have met in this conceptual path on the following concepts:

Neo-rationalism (Santiago de Chile 1981-84)

Arquitectura Lárica (Chiloe, Chile 1985)

Cultural Architecture (Chile 1990-1996)

Emergency Architecture (Spain 2004-2007, Denmark 2010)

Architecture & Human Rights (Spain 2006-2007 – Denmark 2010)

Workshop 5×5 (Spain, Chile 2006-2007)

Workshop 1+1=11 (Denmark 2010-2011 – Italy 2014)

Architecture & Humanitarian Emergencies (Denmark and Sardinia Italy 2010)

Emergency Architecture & Human Rights (Chile 2010-Denmark 2012) 

(E)quality (Chile 2011-2012)

War & Architecture (Denmark 2014)

Postgraduate Master Emergency & Resilience (Venice 2015)

Non-binary architecture 2019

Pandemic & Architecture (Denmark, Italy 2020)

Postgraduate Master Resilient Spaces (Venice 2020)

Global Bridges (Copenhagen 2020)

“Architecture and Human Rights” (ARCH+HR) is an international Laboratory of applied research about Architecture and Human Rights, connected to the University of Sassari UNISS where I am associate professor. ARCH+HR is based in the Chilean Patagonia (AEiDH-Chile), Copenhagen Denmark (ARCH+HR), and Rome-Sadinia Italy (ARCH+HR Italy). All of them are the continuation of Jorge Lobos Studio of Architecture (Chiloé 1985-2000); Lobos, Vallejo, Tato (Madrid 2000-2005); and Jorge Lobos + Associate Architects (Puerto Montt 2001-2007). ARCH+HR and AEiDH-Chile look for setting up our profession as a useful tool for social equality and architectural quality; (E)quality (1). We created this concept in 2011-2012 when I met some friends, who had a deep social perspective of life, they wanted to cooperate with projects in vulnerable areas around the world. There, in the Chilean Patagonia among wooden houses, appeared (E)quality.

Our work is inspired and founded in the theory and pilot research projects that for 40 years, I have developed together with different teams and hundreds of professionals, teachers, students, and friends around the world; Chiloé archipelago, Patagonia, Santiago de Chile, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Copenhagen in Denmark, Sardinia, Rome, and Venice in Italy, plus many universities as FAU of Chile, ETSAM Madrid, ETSAB Barcelona, UdelaR Uruguay, Escola da Cidade Brazil, Eduardo Mondlane Mozambique, RTU Riga Technical University Latvia, KADK The Royal Danish Academy of Copenhagen, IUAV Venice, Chalmer University in Gothenburg Sweden, and UNISS the University of Sassari, which is my research and academic home in Sardinia, Italy. I give all my recognition and gratitude to UNISS-Alghero, and its founder.

1

ORIGIN

CHILOE ARCHIPELAGO (1985-1999)

The beginning of this work story was during the 70s and 80s when a small group of architects from the University of Chile (2) in Santiago moved in an academic journey to the South, toward the Chilean Patagonia. They were surprised by what they saw on those islands. They found out the wooden architecture of the archipelago of Chiloé, a territory with an ancient culture and strong carpenter skills. In these islands, they discovered a pristine culture almost untouched by academic and/or professional architecture. This area developed by itself from around 14.000 years (3) through the main material; the wood. In those years the 1970s-1980s the world started to move fast to Neoliberalism, Chile was isolated by a cruel dictatorship, and the Chiloé islands did not still arrive at the Industrial Revolution.

The absence of professional architects in these islands, until 1975, became Chiloé into a kind of laboratory of ideas and an architectural experiment of what could happen in a well self-define local culture when professional architects arrive. During the 80s, I was a student of architecture trying to deal with a bipolar educational system between Modernism and Postmodernism. My option with a group of colleagues of the University of Chile was to create a third path; the Neo-rationalism (4) (FAU-U. de Chile, Santiago 1980s).

On the other hand, the teachers who discovered Chiloe; Montecinos, Salinas, Iglesias, Diaz, etc. were some of my greatest inspirations because they transcended the discussion Modernism-Postmodernism. This fact, motivated me to move, when I finished the architecture career, to Chiloé archipelago and I created in 1985 my first group of professional reference with the architects Edward Rojas (5), and Lorenzo Berg (6), anthropologist Juan Carlos Olivares (7), photographer Rodrigo Munoz, drawer José Navarro, musician Gabriel Coddou, among others. In those years, as a student of architecture, I learned the practice of our profession and secrets of the local timber construction from Nelson Gonzalez, one of the first architects who came to Chiloe to work in and to establish a studio in Chiloé. I finally worked 15 years in these islands, enough time to establish the premises for a theory and practice of the architecture based on the experience of Chiloé. I called that system originally in the late 1980s “Arquitectura Lárica” (8) following the ideas of the Chilean Poet Jorge Teillier (1935-1996), but later between 1990-1996, I recalled these principles “Cultural Architecture” (9) with the influence of Juan Carlos Olivares, who created the Poetic Anthropology. I published for the first time the ideas of Cultural Architecture at the University of Chile in 1997. This concept deals with the three philosophical definitions of culture; the administrative, the fine arts, and the ethnographic, however, I based the theory on the ethnographic angle, which was what we clearly observed in Chiloé (10). In this system of working the architecture was in the middle way between art and social sciences, and the role of the architect was, quite more than a constructor of buildings, the role was/is a cultural activist, social mediator, human rights defender, among others.

In those years, the 1990s appeared the key elements that we study in each project and that we use until now: ethnographic culture, local identity, relation to the globalization process, insertion in the natural environment, local materials, social participation, low cost, emergency mitigation, circular economy, and resilience, these two last elements did not exist in architecture as concepts during the 90s however, hundreds of architects of Latin America worked on this way without the abstract definition of the concepts.

The SALs (Seminars of Latin America Architecture) during the 90s were a huge window for our experience in Chiloé and a rich process of traveling and sharing architecture among the Latin American countries. These trips allowed me to know most of the countries of my continent and understand that we have common problems and similar architectural solutions and possibilities because of our common history. The SALs allow me, too, to meet the most relevant architects of Latin America; Dieste from Uruguay, Rojas, Eliash, Fernandez, San Martin from Chile, Gonzalez-Lobo from Mexico, Porto, Mendez de Rocha, and Niemayer from Brazil, Salmona and Morales from Colombia, Baracco from Peru, Testa and Moscato from Argentina, among other masters of our profession. 

On the other hand, in those years I created a second professional group of references in Puerto Montt, Chilean Patagonia; Alejandro Wahl, Cristian Gilchrist, Paola Barrientos, and Iris Contreras, with whom I continue working until today. Special recognition to Iris Contreras, my mother, who has been a constant ethical and intellectual inspiration and with who I have worked 35 years, from 1985.

At the same time and after several national and international recognition to our modest work in the Chilean Patagonia, among them the Biennale of Architecture of Chile 1995, The national award of Culture, and the award for the Young architect in 1990, I was invited in 1996 by the dean Manuel Fernandez to became a teacher of projects in the public University of Chile, and teaching our experience in Chiloé. In the capital of Chile, I formed my first academic group with Rodrigo Toro, Fernando Dowling, Igor Rosenman, and later joined us, Francisca Armstrong and Paola Montero, plus several talented young architects. Our closer partner was Enrique Walker an Argentinian-Chilean architect with a radical view of our profession. In those years we formed hundreds of students in the University of Chile in the concept of Cultural Architecture and social activism.

2

DEVELOPMENT

A WINDOW TO THE WORLD

MADRID, BARCELONA, COPENHAGEN, ALGHERO, and CHILOÉ (2000-2015)

After the experience of Chiloé and Latin America, I moved to Spain in 2000 to work as a guest teacher in ETSAM Madrid, but at the same time, I continued with my work in Patagonia, traveling between these two different worlds, geographies, and climates, joined by a common language.

In 2000 I did a short stay of 4 months in the studio of Alvaro Siza in Porto, my goal was to try to understand what is the logic behind his great capacity to connect the architectural space with human feelings. In this sense, he is one of the best architects in the world. His talent is something that we can not express with words, for that reason I decided to re-draw during four months his handmade drawings, in the basement of his studio in Rua Do Aleixo, drawing by drawing. However, I can not say that I discovered the secret of Siza, just I saw an extremely personal and humanistic way to conceive the architectural space. Parallel to this activity of “investigator of Siza´s mystery”, I worked as guest teachers of projects in the University of Porto, in another building of Siza, learning the methodology that they used to teach architecture. 

In ETSAM Madrid (2000-2005) I met several brilliant Spanish architects who have had an enormous influence in my professional work: Andrés Perea, Rafa Torrello, Federico Soriano, Lola Palacios, Jesús Bermejo, Jose Luis Vallejo, and Belinda Tato, these last two founders of Ecosistema Urbano and now teachers in Harvard.

With José Luis and Belinda, we created a studio of architecture in Madrid in 2000 connected to Chile, It was a beautiful experience to work several years with them in Estanislao Figueras, because they enormous professional capacity, talent, and most important, their human quality, basic condition to be a good professional.

In these years we found out two key elements which are constitutive part of my knowledge and our conceptual definition of the architecture, and our future professional work:

1- 2/3 of the world population has no link to professional architecture, 4 billion inhabitants have no access to public water, legal electricity, urban plan, industrial material, or whatever expression or contribution of the professional architecture.

2- More than 90% of architects live in the richest countries of the planet, and when they live in the poorest countries, they use to live in the richest areas of these poor countries.

The combination of these two elements produces an enormous distance between the architects and the challenges that humanity face today.

In December 2004 was the Submarine Earthquake and Tsunami of Indonesia, which produced a huge impact on my work. Magnitude earthquake 9.1 Richter scale, the second biggest registered by a modern seismograph (The biggest was 9.5 magnitude in Valdivia, Chile 1960). Direct consequences: 300,000 dead, 500,000 injured and 2,000,000 displaced. This humanitarian tragedy clearly demonstrated the incapability of our profession to prevent and mitigate the consequences of such disasters. The excuse which is usually presented in these cases as an obstacle for architectural intervention – lack of funding – was not valid on this occasion. This humanitarian disaster had a considerable impact all over the world, since the earthquake had occurred in an area of extensive international tourism, many countries were directly affected. This resulted in immediate cooperation with Indonesia and considerable financial aid. In just a few weeks, “Doctors without borders” Spain got three times more funds than requested. Architects did not, however, have any such interventions in mind. We literally did not know what to do or where to start.

This situation was one antecedent more that the Architecture should move toward the main social needs that our planet faces, for that reason in 2006-2007 we started to work in Architecture and Emergency (11) in “La Barceloneta” with Ignasi Perez Arnal. Work that I continued developing from 2008 with the academic agreement KADK-UNISS in Copenhagen and Sardinia. At the same time, my link to the University of Chile continued and it allowed me to re-contact Enrique Walker, at that time vice-director of postgraduate master in Columbia University N.Y. who has been another key figure in our intellectual construction.

Fortunately, those years I had the option to work with the architect Lina Llorente, head of the International Cooperation of Spain in Chile, and because of Lina, we were able to develop and tested several of our ideas in the most vulnerable areas of Chile as Chiloé or Valparaiso (12) where we did two national competitions of Social Housing trying to improve the systems that Chile was using at that moment. With Lina Llorente we implemented several systems of social housing in Chiloé as the recuperation of 75 emergency housing from the earthquake of 1960 and a system of social investment of microcredits for several hundreds of housing in remote islands of Chiloé.

In those years we published with the Spanish international cooperation in agreement with the government of Chile “A Guide of Architecture and Territory of Chiloé” (13) which was based in the concept of “Cultural Architecture”. the geographer and Governor in the Region Patricio Vallespin was the representant of Chile, and the Guide was in tie collaboration with the architects Edward Rojas, Lorenzo Berg, and the anthropologist Manuel Ulloa. 

In Chile, I continued working with my studio in Puerto Montt in close collaboration with the Foundation Monte Verde led by the scientists Tom Dillehay (U.S.A), Mario Pino (Chile), and Eduardo Alvar (Chile), with Eduardo we created several ideas which could contribute to the democratization and evolution of the Chilean Patagonia, in the south of Chile; as “Children, Nature and Disability” (2002-2010) or the “Archeologic Museum Monte Verde MAMV” (2001-2010) Both projects with an avant-garde view of the future and radical perspective of social equality.

In Rosario Argentina, I met the great intellectual and architect Eleonora Carrano from Rome Italy, who has been a relevant figure in the construction and discussion of all these ideas and theories. Long talking with Eleonora in Rosario, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Madrid, Rome, Sardinia, Copenhagen, Venice, have contributed to shaping all this conceptual perspective. She is a key sharp figure in all this process because of her huge intellectual capacity, intellectual honesty, and deep ethical principles, she has been an invisible hero, as unfortunately several other women in human history.

In 2006-2007, while I was in my postgraduate studies on “Theory and Practice of Project” in ETSAB Barcelona, I created, inspired by Ignasi Perez Arnal, the academic “workshop 5×5” (14) which analyzes 5 different humanitarian emergencies in 5 different countries, places or cultures around of the world. We developed this idea in Barcelona, and later in 2007, we applied the concept in my course of projects in Santiago de Chile, with my college and classmate Fernando Dowling, who was my assistant teacher of that course. It was the consolidation of the model of the workshop 5×5, which we apply until today.

In these years appeared another key figure, in the conceptual construction of Architecture and Human Rights, Miguel Lawner (17) a Chilean architect who was exiled in Denmark during the 70s.  His experience as the architect of Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile killed by the dictatorship in 1973, was a powerful professional and ethical model of another possible architecture. Miguel Lawner (Chile 1928-), Yona Friedman (Hungary 1923 -USA 2020), and Fabrizio Carola (Italy 1931-2019), all of them have been a constant inspiration and privileged intellectual witnesses of the 20th Century and its consequence in the 21st. 

At the end of 2007, I started to work as a guest teacher in KADK Denmark and as a permanent teacher in UNISS, Sardinia Italy, from that year my home university, and a place that has support and motive me to consolidate texts, books, and professional research with the Italian method and logic.

In my work in KADK, together to Peder Duelund, under the agreement KADK-UNISS, we have had 22 editions of the workshop 5×5 from 2008 to 2015 in different universities and humanitarian institutions around the world; Mozambique, Turkey, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Latvia, Italy, Denmark. (See workshop 5×5 list below) (18) . In these workshops have participated hundreds or thousands of students, teachers, and collaborators as Jan Søndergaard, Frank Bundgaard, Maria Gomez-Guillamon, Jørgen Eskemose, Karin Skousboll, Jakob Knudsen, and Katrine Lotz, among others.

In those years I had the opportunity to meet brilliant students of architecture as Fernando Ferreiro (Chile) who works for UN-Habitat Mozambique, Felipe Vera (Chile) who works in Interamerican Bank of Development, Pola Mora (Chile) who works for Arqdaily, all of them from FAU-Chile. Martina Rubino (Italy), Borys Wrzeszcz (Poland), and later Amalie Gernow (Denmark) all of them from KADK, among other extraordinary students from countries and cultures of the five continents.

During and with the workshops 5×5 we finished giving form to the concept “Architecture and Humanitarian Emergencies”, and I started to establish the bases for a theory of Architecture and Human Rights.

All these theories, concepts, and ideas have been largely published in four books between 2011 and 2014, with KADK as editor in Copenhagen and Aracne Editrice in Rome, plus several lectures and articles around the world;

-The concept “Architecture and Humanitarian Emergencies” (19) appeared in the book with the same name in 2010 Ed. KADK

-The concept “Architecture & Human Rights” was writing for the first time in: “Architecture & Humanitarian Emergencies 02” (20)

-Later in 2012 and 2014 in two other books in English “Architecture & Humanitarian Emergencies” (21) and in Spanish “Architecture & Human Rights” (22) appeared the development of this idea defining twelve unpostponable and fundamental topics inside of the theme Architecture & Human Rights:

1 CULTURAL PROCESSES

2 HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES & RESILIENCE

3 IMMIGRATION & REFUGEE CAMPS

4 SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY & CLIMATE CRISIS

5 WATER & FOOD PRODUCTION

6 SOCIAL (E)QUALITY

7 DEMOCRATIZATION & CITIZENSHIP

8 FAVELAS & SLUMS

9 LOW-COST & AFORDABLE HOUSING

10 TRANSPORT IDEAS

11 SCIENCE & VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES

12 EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES & NEW ROLES FOR ARCHITECTURE

At the same time, the Chilean architect Ricardo Labarca started to collaborate with ARCH+HR. He came exiled to Denmark during the 70s for being opposed to the dictatorship in his home country, Chile. He had a Pakistani firend in Denmark, we visited him in the winter of 2010-2011 and he explained to us the idea of a Pakistani quote “1+1=11”. It was extremely inspiring, beautiful, and poetic. At that moment, I was looking for a name for a workshop on collective construction. In his home outside Copenhagen we found the name: Workshop 1+1=11

The first Workshop 1+1=11 was in 2014 in La Sabina (23), close to Rome with another Chilean architect, who lives in Italy since the 1980s, Renato Vivaldi. He did his first steps in architecture in Chiloé, a mysterious way to close a circle. Besides it, in Chiloé exists the same modality of co-work called “minga”, a traditional collective way of cooperation inside a local community. During the 80s and 90s, we have done several construction workshops in Chiloé with this system, which now we call Workshop 1+1=11.

Several organizations and academic institutions have participated in the creation and development of these concepts. For instance: the University of Chile, The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen, ETSAM Madrid, ETSAM Barcelona, Escola da Cidade Sao Paulo, University of Sassari, University of the Republic Montevideo, University Austral of Chile, University Eduardo Mondlane Maputo, University of Kocaeli Istambul, Riga Technical University Latvia, and the University of Venice, among others.

In these years appeared, other important Latin American architects and academics in the discussion and construction of these topics as:

Ciro Pirondi from Brazil, Angela Perdomo, Gonzalo Balarini and Raul Velazques from Uruguay, Andrea Tapia and Horacio Casal from Argentina, and professionals from the other side of the world as Ugis Bratuskins from Latvia, Wesam Asali from Syria, Eleonora Carrano, Silvia Serreli, Giovanni Maciocco from Italy, Josep Mias from Barcelona, the Psychologist Alvaro Viancos and the artist Miguel Vega both Chileans exiled in Denmark, and the Danish architect Erik Juul with who we did “Emergency Architecture.dk” (24) in Copenhagen in 2010.

With EA.dk we did “This is Not a Home” a pilot research project for the homeless in the garden of Den Frie Museum of Copenhagen led by Malene Ratcliffe. The project used the expression about the work of Marcel Duchamp in New York 1917, almost a century ago, “This is not a Toilet”, which also shows the paradox of how much behind is the architecture in relation to the evolution of human ideas.

All these academic and professionals, among others, have been part of the construction of these ideas and ideals of an architecture more proactive in the challenges that our planet faces today.

Between 2000-2015 we received several awards and recognition for our work as Europan VI 2001 and The XVIII Award Asturias of Architecture 2006 Spain, both with José Luis Vallejo & Belinda Tato, as well our projects has been selected in several Biennale and architecture seminars around the world.

3

CONSOLIDATION

PROJECTION OF THE WORK: APPLIED RESEARCH (2015-2030?)

COPENHAGEN, ALGHERO, ROME VENECIA, and CHILOE

From 2010, I was trying to find a way and an organizational system where the architecture, with its knowledge and values, could become a useful social tool in the most vulnerable communities around the world. My goal was to create an organization in which architecture could work in a more efficient and bigger scale according to the dimension of the World Challenges.

The first answer came from Chile where from 2012, together with the architects Igor Rosenman defined a system for a non-profit organization “Emergency Architecture & Human Rights” EAHR-Chile (AEiDH its name in Spanish) (25) (May 2015 Santiago). EAHR was conceptually based in the series of books that we did with Peder Duelund under the academic agreement KADK-UNISS and published by KADK in Copenhagen and Aracne Editrice in Rome. These books collected the experience of the most of twenty Workshops 5×5 around the world. EAHR (AEiDH) was inspired by those architectural results and was thought as a tool or instrument to place the architecture in a middle way between social sciences and art.

In AEiDH Chile, other professionals joined the group; the anthropologists Manuel Ulloa and Leopoldo Pineda and the architects Fernando Dowling, Lina Rojas, and Ximena Arizaga, all of them from Chile. Manuel Ulloa has a capital importance in the conceptualization and discussion of these ideas.

We started several research projects with a radical social focus, as “Children Nature and Disability” project created by Eduardo Alvar from Monte Verde Foundation, or the “co-housing for immigrants in the center of Santiago” research led by Fernando Dowling.

In 2015, I created in Copenhagen, copying the concept from Chile, EAHR-Denmark. The idea behind this decision was to try to connect both organizations and improving the internationalization of these ideas and research.

I led EAHR Denmark and Chile for 4 years. In those years the organization won in Chile the “Biennale of Architecture 2017” and the award “Building of The Year 2018”, given by another Chilean company Arqdaily. In 2019 Cité Paris gave me the “Global Award for Sustainable Architecture” for my work and experience of 35 years in applied research and pilot projects which encounter Architecture and Human Rights, as I have said before, always in collaboration with hundreds of other professionals

However, this architectural system did not have the success that I have expected. In 4 years in EAHR-Denmark we built only few pilot projects around the world, with a very limited impact in the local communities. The architectural recognition could not change the low social impact that our research project has had, one proof more, than architects are not prepared for these World Challenges. From a conceptual perspective these years were not the exception; one small contribution in 2019 “Non-binary Architecture” (26) because of the project that I led “Pavilion LGBT+ Youth” in Dream City of Roskilde Festival. In this project we where lucky to work with Naika Ingwersen and Anne Harrit and their proactive team of Unicorny Camp. Anne was who introduced us the concept of Non-binary gender.

In 2019, motivated by the “Global Award of Sustainable Architecture”, I wrote the Manifesto “Architecture Is a Human Right” (27) to be presented in the Award ceremony of 13th May, during the spring of Paris, just a few days after the tragedy of Notre Dame Cathedral. This Manifesto collected in few words all the previous experience from Chiloé to Venice. With the same title, I did in 2021 the last book of the series Architecture & Humanitarian Emergencies” under the agreement KADK-UNISS “Architecture Is a Human Right” (28) which shows the last workshops 5×5 in Chile, Latvia, Denmark, etc. plus some thesis that I have led of a couple of brilliant students in Copenhagen. In this book, the main article, connects the history of the social architecture post-Industrial Revolution with a special focus on the creation of Bauhaus, Germany 1919, and their social ideals, until the situation of architecture today, where we can propose the concept of Architecture and Human Rights, exactly 100 years after Bauhaus. It is important to underline that all this work and reflections were made before the creation of EAHR, which worked as a tool to concrete these ideas.

Nevertheless, in the summer of 2015, I was invited to be one of the international teachers of the workshop WAVE in IUAV-Venice. I proposed the theme “War & Architecture” (29) and we did with the IUAV students a project as an architectural action for the impact of the Syrian Civil War in the immigration toward Europe. We have previously developed these ideas in KADK-UNISS in the workshop 5×5 in Copenhagen 2014. In WAVE-Venice we had the relevant contribution of the Syrian architect and Ph.D. University of Cambridge Wesam Asali, who has been a constant collaboration and inspiration.

During the workshop WAVE, we started the conversations with Professor Benno Albretch, at that moment Director of the Postgraduate School IUAV, to create a Postgraduate Master Course in Venice. The 22 editions of the Workshop 5×5 around the world, and the series of 4 books “Architecture and Humanitarian Emergencies” plus other publications and articles gave the academic structure for the Postgraduate Master Emergency & Resilience M.E&R-IUAV with three academic modules; Emergency & Early Recovery; Reconstruction; and Mitigation & Resilience. Exactly how it was showed in our previous books. These academic activities; workshop 5×5 and the series of books, gave also the work structure ARCH+HR (31)

In 2016, I was named director of the master in Venice, the same year that we inaugurated the first edition of the Postgraduate program Emergency & Resilience, which have had today 4 editions and around 40 young professionals specialized in Humanitarian Emergencies, from very different countries and cultures: Jordan, Syria, Sudan, Cyprus, Greece, Brazil, Mexico, USA, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, etc.

I trust that these young professionals can set up new roles for architecture and change the profession during the next years from the international institutions where they are working at this moment. They are part of the hopeful of this architectural field that for so many years hundreds of architects have worked with.

In order to improve and increase the impact of this academic program, in 2020 the Master Emergency & Resilience joined the Research Institute EPIC – IUAV in Venice which concentrates the previous research of Professor Benno Albretch about Reconstruction and Professor Francesco Musco about Climate Change, plus the contribution of the architects Eleonora Carrano, Mathias Bertin, and Jacopo Galli. With them, we created the Postgraduate Master “Resilient Spaces” M.RS-IUAV (32) which joins Climate Change, Humanitarian Emergencies, and Reconstruction, three powerful topics of Architecture inside of the World Challenges that our planet faces today. 

At this moment of the history of the planet, we should increase the partnership and international cooperation, it is a clear way that we can improve our professional response in a holistic perspective. This vision is shared by “Social Cities 2030” (33) founded by the social scientist Anne Boukris and the architect Nina Jensen, in Denmark, with who we have created a stronger capacity of interaction. On the other hand, during the first part of this year, I have been thinking about how to improve the architectural response to the Global Challenges, because it is obvious that the answer is not a traditional NGO, which easily loses the architectural quality. My answer was Global Bridges (34) a concept that I was thinking about a long time ago from 2011 in my text Sciences and Architecture. This concept finished taking form in my lectures for the Master E&R IUAV 2019 and inside of the Laboratory of applied research ARCH+HR which links scientific innovation and local communities around the world.

Today, 2020, I have transform the original AEiDH Chile into a more formal Laboratory of architecture with a social focus in Denmark; Architecture & Human Rights ARCH+HR. This year appeared the pandemic Covid-19, a hard experience for our societies. This fact marked the work of our laboratory ARCH+HR. In March 2020 we immediately started to work with the Master E&R-Venice, and UNISS in the research “Pandemic & Architecture” (35) a research system to try to understand what is happening in our society

This work counted with the relevant collaboration of Eleonora Carrano (Italy) and Justin Ware (USA) plus Paola Faro (Italy) and Eirini Grigoriadou (Greece). According to this research document, we developed three propositions of projects for “Pandemic & Architecture” in different scales with all the students of the Master E&R in Venice; The future (2120), The territory (Lesbos), and The school (San Salvador) all of them with a critical vision of our relation society and nature.

In ARCH+HR we expect to get, in the next years, a better balance between Social Equality and Architecture Quality; (E)quality, breaking down the tendency to act in social quantity without architectural quality, and the opposite way around. However, to get the specific balance between these two concepts in each particular situation of each local community is the talent of an architect. It is what we should train.

We also expect that the planet could get a better balance between Nature and Society. We, humankind, should have the courage to re-think our social structure, life models, and ethical principles, in a moment in which we can clearly see an enormous crisis of values, in all the levels; from global, community to an individual level.

This search for a new balance in the planet means a new social deal where the architecture should show the capacity to interpret and building the new reality. Architecture has the mission to consolidate a new human perspective to face the enormous World Challenges of our modern society has today: Humanitarian Emergencies, Climate Crisis, Neo-liberalism, Social Inequality, Human Migration, Pandemic. A clear transition from the old Capitalism of the 20th Century to some system that we, humankind, still do not name.

Lystoftevej 19 Brede, Copenhagen. 11th April 2020