The first meeting: Barcelona
July 2014
The official partnership and FOAT (associated partner) met for the first time in Barcelona on the 27th and 28th of March 2014, hosted by IAAC. During the first day, partners had the chance to visit IAAC headquarters, before starting a discussion about project management issues and activities to be implemented in preparation, during and after the meeting and, in general, throughout the project life. Afterwards, each partner introduced itself, describing the organization and its main activities and projects carried out in the last years. Also the associated partners were introduced, FOAT by its representatives and RIBA by the UK partner (USE).
The second day was subdivided into two parts. The first was dedicated to the analysis and description of each partner country context, in relation to architecture competition. Each partner introduced the national regulatory framework and described how it is applied to competitions (public or private), providing also information about how they are taken into account. The second part of the day dealt with a discussion among partners starting from a common problem to be addressed by the project, that is provide more professional opportunities for young architects. At the end of the meeting, partners have achieved important results to move on with project activities.
The final consideration, in order to improve the European dimension, is the importance of building a network in each country, acting as a database, where in particular young architects can subscribe and become the contact point for those offices and firms which want to participate to a competition in another country. In order to do that, it would be important to build a system able to identify skills and competencies and define a course to train competition programmers.
Check out the pictures here