Creation and catastrophe: Meeting at RIBA 7th April 2016

Architects, urban planners engineers, town planners,humanitarian organisations and academics met at the British Architects Institute, RIBA on 7 April 2016 to discuss the different roles of built environment professionals and humanitarian agencies in post disaster reconstruction.

The event was introduced by RIBA president Jane Duncan and there were keynote addresses from Brookes visiting Professor Ian Davis and David Alexander from UCL. Brookes Emeritus Professor Nabeel Hamdi led the final plenary session. The event was truly international with presenters from Australia, Denmark and Spain. UNHCR and IFRC gave presentations from the humanitarian perspective, and the architecture sector was represented by Foster and Partners.

Cathrine Brun, CENDEP director made a presentation about the work of our centre, and Charles Parrack of CENDEP was Rapporteur for the event.

This was a ground breaking meeting to make links between the practitioners and the professions in humanitarian response, to understand better each others roles and expertise.

The event was organised by Red Cross (IFRC), RMIT Melbourne, the Development Planning Unit at UCL and CENDEP.

There were four panels discussing private sector experiences, processes and products,  research and training, and experiences from operational fieldwork.

The meeting agreed to take the following ideas forward:

• Show how built environment professionals can act as development practitioners, especially in urban settings
• Build local capacity to respond to disasters
• Formalise links between the professions and the humanitarian sector. A network of networks.
• Advise educational providers on recommended course content
• Support career opportunities for professionals to gain humanitarian experience
• Commit to learn lessons from failure

Charles Parrack