Diego Navarro, lecturer at UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, took part in the 36th edition of the international eCAADe (Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe) conference held in the Polish city of Łódź between 19 and 21 September. 

Navarro gave a speech on 20 September about smart cities, co-authored with Dr Ana Cocho-Bermejo and PhD student Zeynep Birgonul. “Unilateral appropriation of the term ‘smart city’ for commercial purposes by industry may have a negative impact on a city, encouraging methods where non-academic agents have full control of the design of a city. This, in turn, leads to more complex issues, such as sociology, urban design or architectural synthesis being omitted”, Diego Navarro explains. In order to avoid these dangers, Diego Navarro made clear in his speech the need for city management to be steered by academia, creating interdisciplinary groups which will analyse, propose and theorise on the recent discipline of the “Science of Cities”.

eCAADe organises a conference every year at a European university. In this edition, eminent speakers such as Krzysztof Ingarden, president of Ingarden & Ewý Architects, or Harlen Miller, associate architect at UNStudio’s Amsterdam office, participated. eCAADe will be held next year in Porto, Portugal.