On Wednesday 12 December, the Sant Pau Modernist complex hosted the official closure of the 11th edition of the annual conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU), organised by the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture in partnership with UN-Habitat and the Urban Resilience Research Network (URNet). The congress took place on 10 and 12 December under the title “Reframing Urban Resilience Implementation: Aligning Sustainability and Resilience”.

More than 200 experts from universities and research centres around the world took part in the over twenty sessions in which they discussed the need to usher in a more cross-disciplinary and inclusive approach to the implementation of urban resilience. The programme included issues related to climate change governance and planning; urban design and management for making cities more sustainable; participatory processes and post-disaster and post-conflict policies. 

On Wednesday morning, the conference participants paid field visits to local infrastructure, including the La Estrella rainwater storage tank in Badalona; the self-run Can Batlló in the Sants district of Barcelona; the Barcelona Institute of Technology; and 22@, in the city’s Poblenou district. 

The afternoon featured a closing conference by Gonzalo Lizarralde, holder of the Université de Montréal Fayolle-Magil Construction Research Chair in Architecture, the Built Environment and Sustainability. Lizarralde gave a conference entitled “Invisible Houses: Housing, Disaster Risk Reduction and Reconstruction in Developing Countries”. 

The congress ended with words of thanks from three UIC Barcelona School of Architecture lecturers and members of the organising committee: Carmen Mendoza, Lorenzo Chelleri and Raquel Colacios, who stressed the importance of transdisciplinarity in the implementation of sustainable urban resilience strategies.