On 29 May, the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the University Master’s Degree in International Cooperation: Sustainable Emergency Architecture. This academic programme, the first of its kind in the Spanish university system, is intended primarily for architects, urban planners, geographers and engineers and looks to train experts in the development, design and management of global cooperation and sustainable development projects. 

Since its launch ten years ago, 202 students from 58 countries around the world have taken this master’s degree. In the words of its director, Dr Carmen Mendoza Arroyo, “The value of this programme lies in the interdisciplinary approach we provide, which enables future professionals to gain experience in the reconstruction and development of communities afflicted by poverty, armed conflict or natural disasters, from an urban to an architectural scale”. 

The official event held to commemorate the tenth anniversary will take place in UIC Barcelona’s Aula Jardí and feature renowned British professor Ian Davis. Visiting professor at Lund University (Sweden), Oxford Brookes University (England) and Kyoto University (Japan), Davis has been involved in disaster management since 1972 and is considered one of the world’s top experts in post-disaster settlements. Over the past 45 years, he has worked in more than 50 countries around the globe in over thirty disasters for NGOs, governments, academic groups and also the United Nations. In 1996, he received the Sasakawa Award from the UN for his contributions to disaster prevention. As a guest speaker, he will deliver a lecture entitled “Ten Significant Developments in Shelter and Settlements, 2009-2019”, in which he will analyse how interventions in post-disaster scenarios have evolved worldwide over the past decade. 

The aim of the event is to promote the exchange of experiences between current and former students of the master’s degree and guest lecturers, with an informal format that seeks to engage attendees in discussion about emergency architecture, cooperation and international development. 

“When Raquel Colacios, Sandra Bestraten and I began this journey, we could never have imagined how many wonderful students, team members, guest lecturers and associated organisations would join us along the way. For our tenth anniversary celebration, we wanted to assemble the entire network of people so that, together, we could evaluate how we have grown both academically and in terms of dissemination”, concludes Carmen Mendoza.