RESILIENCE

What are the current and future crises that society and the built environment face and what are the consequences? What are resilient (re)solutions, new approaches, intentions and aspirations needed at different scales? How can we respond to uncertainty? How do some of these crises and solutions interconnect? What transformational change is needed and how can we achieve resilience in reality? Alongside the study of resilient cities and living environments (i.e. housing and the immediate neighbourhood), we especially welcome impacts and solutions for the less studied public buildings (including schools, offices, libraries, supermarkets etc.) and their management and organisational practices.

RESTORE & REPAIR

This sub-theme goes beyond circular construction and the physical repair of existing structures, but also unfolds where restorative action is needed in society through, for example, democratic processes, care for nature and non-humans (biophilia, topophilia), and restoring health and well-being of all living-forms and the planet. How can we create resilience while also simultaneously restoring past damage(s)? What new regional, city and building typologies and different models of living, working and learning and ownership and management might be more restorative and adaptive to changing conditions? What re-thinking and re-imagination is required across and with different sections of society and with other disciplines? How can we achieve radical inclusivity and equality for all?

REVALUE & REFORM

Our current development of the built environment has been exploitative, extractive and unequal. Can we achieve a resilient, restorative, diverse, inclusive and equal sustainable built environment with the current mindset and values that has made us complicit? What new values, reforms and ways of ‘seeing’ and working are needed? What new power structures, systemic changes and de-colonial practices are integral to achieving a sustainable built environment? Where has this been successfully achieved, and how might we spread these new value structures rapidly?

reflect & re-educate

What are the implications and challenges of new situations and values for what, and how, we teach and learn? What different pedagogies and modes of learning are more resilient during crises (e.g. virtual learning the pandemic), and in integrating sustainability and restorative principles in built environment education? This concerns not just formal education but also industry and societal stakeholders who are part of delivering a restorative world and how skills gaps may be overcome. What approaches have been shown to be successful? And, just as importantly, what do we need to unlearn?