Purpose and community

We are living in times that until a few weeks ago were unimaginable. A pandemic has left the world running at very low speeds. The impact of COVID-19 is collective and personal. Each of us has our own particular way of dealing with this challenge. As IAAC, we have faced it head on. Our classes have shifted from face-to-face to online, we have continued to research, and we have tried to keep the energies of our community together. From the soul maker of IAAC we have helped to manufacture sanitary material. IAAC has continued to function and we have tried to make this experience of adversity a learning experience. And we have done it from everyone’s homes or from the community that lives in confinement at Valldaura. And in every corner of the IAAC community we have wanted to show solidarity with those who are suffering with the state of play, to think about the cities after the Coronavirus.

It is a difficult time to make predictions. It is a difficult time to have clear visions. But in the absence of vision we have two things left, our purpose and our community. Our purpose is to think cities for life. To design cities for life with dignity. And we do so in the face of this conjunctural emergency of the Coronavirus and we do so in the face of the structural emergency of climate change. That is why we have been working for years on the resilience of cities or why we are dedicated to the design of biocities. And our way of making our purpose concrete is to keep our great international community committed and active. More than ever we have to contribute our knowledge and our energy to build cities for life and homes to grow as people in any circumstance.

As president of the IAAC, I would like to thank all our students for their collaboration in these challenging times. I want to thank the efforts and involvement of the faculty and research personnel, and IAAC staff as a whole. Thanks to the management team for leading the adaptation of IAAC to these new circumstances. Thanks to our alumni for the encouragement they give us from all over the world.

I ask you all to please take care of yourselves. We need your talent and your commitment to continue building cities for a worthy life.

Xavier Marcet.