World Day of Architecture

Today, October 1, we celebrate the “World Day of Architecture”. To all of you, I wish you a productive and green architecture day! We should not limit the good work to one day; it should be spread around the whole year.

Here is the letter from Gaëtan Siew who is the president of the International Union of Architects (UIA).

“This day belongs to all the world’s architects but also to their public and their partners, to those implicated in architecture, and to its true enthusiasts. The UIA has chosen to devote this year’s event to an issue that concerns and preoccupies us all, climate change, and more specifically to one of its principal causes: carbon dioxide emissions.

Approximately 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the construction and transportation sectors. The construction sector alone is responsible for 50% of annual energy consumption. Every actor in the building industry bears a part of the responsibility for this situation, but every actor also has the ability to make a difference in mitigating the effects of climate change. Architects are on the front line to engage this struggle.

Architects must be exacting in terms of energy performance for all the materials that go into their works. They must also consider the carbon footprint made by these materials during fabrication, transportation, construction, and maintenance. It is every architect’s responsibility to preserve the natural resources of the planet, eliminate waste, recycle, and use local resources with the imagination and ingenuity that characterize our profession. All know-how, techniques, technologies, and innovations must take us closer to these objectives.

The International Union of Architects represents over one million, three hundred thousand architects around the world, and their mobilization has immense potential in this combat.

Many UIA Member Sections are already committed to this goal. We hope to publicize their actions, and to communicate their methods, objectives, and results so that we can learn from and build on each other’s experiences. This is the UIA’s role and its duty. Our time is counted, but the collective force of our global professional community can, if it so decides, provide a resounding response to the challenge that is being launched today by the 2007 World Day of Architecture: transmitting zero CO2 emission architecture.

To all, I wish a constructive and creative architecture day.”

For more information on the UIA, please visit UIA.