The UIA congress begins: "We cannot stand still in the face of planetary challenges"

Sant Adrià de BesòsA ballet of construction machinery. The highlight of the inauguration of the World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona at the Tres Xemeneies del Besòs was a choreography with six cranes, by the company Cabosanroque and the studio Cube.bz. For half an hour, the six crane operators joined forces to uncork a bottle of cava with one of the cranes and serve a glass to the president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), Regina Gonthier, who with the corresponding toast closed the inauguration of the congress, which is held until Thursday, July 2nd.

The most academic part of the congress, titled Becoming. Architectures for a planet in transition, will take place at the International Convention Centre of Barcelona. The Tres Xemeneies host the main exhibition and a tiered seating area with capacity for 1,300 people for the open debates that will be held every evening. "A planet in transition demands new ways of thinking, new forms of collaboration, and a renewed commitment to the public interest and the built environment, while the profession is called upon to assume its ethical responsibility," said the president of the UIA, Regina Gonthier.

In addition to the lectures, the congress program includes tours to visit the best architecture in Barcelona and all of Catalonia. The heatwave did not dampen the spirits of the guests, and, according to the organization, about 5,000 people attended the inauguration, many of whom, some without being able to sit, followed the event from the esplanade of the old thermal power plant. In her speech, the dean of the College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC), Sandra Bestraten, warned that, to face so many challenges, architects must recover their "professional dignity".

Regarding the intellectual part of the congress, the event was attended by urban planner Joan Busquets, who was already involved in the UIA congress in Barcelona in 1996. "A hundred years ago, modern architects managed to reformulate the housing model, a fact that is still visible in Barcelona with the work of GATCPAC. Today we have taken a new step forward and we propose housing as a universal priority. This must happen in the Western world, but it is dramatically necessary in the Global South, where more than 50% of buildings lack essential services. Architects, as we will see at the congress, are prepared to propose new critical forms of housing and innovative construction and management processes. But 21st-century architecture is also subject to the pressure of globalization, which aims to make all cities look alike," said Busquets, who also called for enjoying Barcelona.

From the congress team, the director, Guim Costa, highlighted that Barcelona will be an architectural laboratory during these days. "The coastline, the neighborhoods, the buildings, the streets, and the public spaces will be the settings where many of the great challenges that define our era will become visible: climate change, housing accessibility, urban inequality, energy transition, and new forms of coexistence. Here, global challenges become local realities, and global realities become local challenges," said Costa. "We cannot stand still in the face of planetary challenges. Architecture is called to exercise its capacity to act, to transform, to change the course of events. This is the idea of becoming. It is about taking ownership of change and inhabiting it over time," assured Carmen Torres, congress curator along with Mariona Benedito, Pau Bajet, Maria Giramé, Pau Sarquella, and Tomeu Ramis.

In a Barcelona in full transformation

Before the event at Les Tres Xemeneies, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, welcomed participants to the Saló de Cent of City Hall. Collboni recalled that Barcelona has become a "world center for architecture" and is the only city to host the UIA congress twice. From the 1996 edition, the mayor recalled the conference full of star architects in Plaça dels Àngels with the Macba still to be inaugurated as a backdrop. That conference has remained a symbol of "the reconquest of the city center through culture and architecture," and Collboni now considers that the congress venue in Sant Adrià de Besòs represents "metropolitan Barcelona," and that the future hub in Les Tres Xemeneies will be an icon of the reuse of "an industrial building in terms of sustainability and future economy."

"We are hosting the UIA congress at a time when we are recovering transformations planned until 2035, which will also transform our city in major areas such as the new Montjuïc, the new stations of La Sagrera and Sants, the new neighborhoods of La Marina and La Sagrera. And the transformation of sections of the entire city's waterfront with sustainability criteria. The accumulated investment will be greater than that made in the '92 Olympic Games. This is the magnitude of the transformation," said Collboni.

At City Hall, Gonthier said that holding the congress in Barcelona "is not only a recognition of the city's architecture and heritage, but also of a long tradition of understanding architecture and urban planning as instruments of public policy, society, social cohesion, and collective well-being." After the event in the Saló de Cent, the authorities toured the waterfront by boat to Marina del Fòrum and from there to Les Tres Xemeneies, where they inaugurated the central exhibition of the congress and attended an institutional dinner.