Responsive Cities, organized by IAAC's Advanced Architecture Group, is a biennial symposium focused on reimagining urban futures. This year's theme shifts the narrative from resource scarcity to abundance, encouraging material-driven innovations in architecture and urban design to accelerate decarbonization efforts. The event aims to redefine resources and explore new sourcing methods to offset carbon emissions.

By incorporating reclaimed materials, upcycling waste, and designing for disassembly and reuse, the symposium challenges conventional norms, positioning materials at the center of circular design and the carbon economy. Concepts such as urban mining and buildings as material banks are explored, necessitating new practices like digital material flow monitoring and advanced computation for physical-digital integration.

Design Matter(s) for Decarbonization delves into groundbreaking processes for monitoring, designing, and manufacturing with reconstituted and reused materials. It advocates for metabolic architecture that responds to material availability, redefines building lifecycles, and regenerates its environmental impact, going beyond mere reduction.

Responsive Cities 2025 will highlight the significance of designing with evolving material libraries, such as biomaterials and living matter. This approach aims to reduce the building industry's carbon footprint, enhance biogenic carbon storage, and promote a restorative, decarbonizing strategy for design and production. By integrating natural and technological solutions, the symposium envisions a future where design actively mitigates the negative impacts of current construction practices.

Topics

• Design & Build: design for disassembly |form follows availability |digital manufacturing for reuse |circular feedback
• Decarbonize: zero & negative carbon materials |building & cities as carbon sinks |regeneration |sustainable land management
• Adapt to Climate & Perform: synthetic ecologies |living systems |building metabolism |design performance
• Digitize the Physical: computing (living) matter |monitoring | digital twins |material passports
• Ethics & Policies: design ethics | inclusivity |decision making |democratize technologies

Key Dates

• Extended Abstract Submission: 5th October 2024
• Selection of participants for full paper: 31st October 2024
• Deadline for full paper: 10th December 2024
• Selection of full papers: 2nd January 2025
• Symposium dates: 25th-26th February 2025

Requirements & Process

All proposals must be in English.

The paper submission will take place in two stages. The first stage will include a submission of an extended abstract that will be subject to a blind peer review process. Selected abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper. After the review of the full papers on the second stage, participants will be informed on the final selected papers to be published and/or presented in the symposium.

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