The Fourth International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design (4ICAUD-2021), which took place on 24 – 26 November 2021 in Tirana, Albania, led by the Department of Architecture at Epoka University was co-organized with the COST Action 19136 NET4Age-Friendly, as well as with the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Polytechnic University of Tirana.
Building upon the success of the previous three editions of ICAUD, the conference provided a wide range of topics on architecture and urban design and an international audience of academics and practitioners from around the world. The 4-ICAUD provided an international forum for knowledge exchange, where 82 scientific research were presented by academicians from 19 different countries. In total, around 180 authors contributed to the conference. All papers are going to be reviewed by a scientific committee consisting of internationally acclaimed scholars. The six keynote speakers from Albania, Italy, Portugal and Egypt comprised internationally renowned academics and local policymakers.
On the 26th November, the event day started with a keynote by the Action Chair, Carina Dantas, under the topic: A holistic approach to wellbeing through the life course - learnings from the pandemic context post-2020.
The speech was followed by a New-Normal Track – Research Panel 2: SHAFE - Smart Healthy Age-friendly Environments, dedicated to NET4Age-Friendly themes, with Willeke Van Staalduinen and Maddalena Illario moderating a broad panel of members and invitees: Carina Dantas, Elizabeth Mestheneos, Tamara Sharshakova, Paula Alexandra Silva, Vesna Žegarac Leskovar, Odeta Manahasa, Enza Tersigni, Fabio Naselli, Mario Losasso and Vanja Skalicky Klemencic.
The 4-ICAUD tackled the most recent theme of the New Normality, which was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Global Event that affected the world in early 2020 has had some huge reflections in many of the design fields, forcing architects and engineers, urban planners, and designers to rethink many of the consolidated knowledge in the designing approaches. Some of that changes are temporary and destined to go back in a short time; meanwhile, others seem to become permanent and able to challenge our personal and social mindset, as designers as well as end-users. Those ongoing changes also stress the importance of a rising transdisciplinary interaction among the diverse fields of knowledge, which has affected the whole people real-life realm at a global scale.
The 4th International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design (4ICAUD2021) initiated a deep “think-tank” moment on how we have been challenged and on what we are gaining in the switch between NEW & OLD NORMALITY POST-2020. Taking advantage of the time experienced and ripened one year later than the beginning of the pandemic era, to draft what will be the after-pandemic era in the fields of design, and not only in that.
The organizing committee of the conference is currently collecting the scientific papers aiming to develop a book entitled 'NEW & OLD NORMALITY POST-2020' which is going to be published in the Special Issue of “The Urban Book Series”, a resource for urban studies and geography research by Springer.