Closing Symposium
The Architecture of Systemic Recalibration
How must architectural practice evolve in response to a rapidly changing world?
As ecological limits, geopolitical tensions and social inequalities increasingly shape our built environment, architecture is being challenged to redefine its role. No longer concerned solely with the design of buildings, the discipline is increasingly called upon to engage with the systems that shape everyday life: from material flows and resource scarcity to ownership models, ecological restoration and social resilience.
The Closing Symposium of IABR 2026: SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT explores how architectural practice is responding to these shifts. What does it mean to design for public value rather than economic growth? How can architects contribute to regenerative futures? And what new forms of practice are emerging as designers rethink their relationship with materials, ecosystems, technology, finance and society?
Bringing together architects, researchers and thinkers from different disciplines, the symposium reflects on the changing role of the designer in times of transition. From adaptive reuse and material innovation to new forms of collaboration, civic responsibility and more-than-human approaches, the programme explores how architecture is recalibrating its values, methods and ambitions.
Hosted in the former Hunter Douglas factory, a site that reflects both the opportunities and inequalities embedded in global systems, the symposium concludes this biennial by looking beyond today's challenges towards the future of the profession.
The future is already here. It just needs reassembling.
Admission to the event costs €27,50 (a ticket for the symposium also grants access to the exhibition).
The language of the event is English.
Program
13:00 | Walk-in
13:30 | Symposium
The full programme and speakers will be announced soon.