On 28 and 29 November the German Architecture Magazine Bauwelt organizes the Bauwelt Congress 2024 with the title Geht´s noch? in Berlin. Belgian landscape architect Bass Smets will give a lecture about Biospheric Urbanism.
Building consumes tons of resources, releases large amounts of CO₂, destroys biodiversity and increases segregation processes. So is it best not to build at all? After all, there's no denying it: architecture is part of all those problems that we occasionally want to capitulate to.
But there is good news: architecture can also be part of the solution to these problems. This is the case when architects, urban planners, landscape architects, developers and those responsible in politics and administration succeed in escaping the quagmire of constraints resulting from regulations, financing models, tight schedules and lengthy procedures not by taking the easy route of lazy compromises, but by adopting an attitude that can best be described as utopian pragmatism. This is a pragmatism that is not satisfied with the search for the lowest common denominator within the framework of what is feasible, but one that seeks to expand the scope of what is feasible as far as possible.
The Bauwelt Congress 2024 will discuss buildings and projects that planners have implemented based on such an attitude and that demonstrate other mixes of use, other financing models, other processes, other constellations of cooperation and coexistence are possible.
At the 19th edition of the Biennale Architettura in Venice, the team of Bas Smets, Valerie Trouet and Stefano Mancuso will present the exhibition 'Building Biospheres' in the Belgian pavilion. The Belgian pavilion at the Biennale Architettura is an initiative of the Flemish government and commissioned by Flanders Architecture Institute.
Belgian pavilion at Biennale Architettura 2025
