Fellowship On Law and Architecture: Final Public Event
Join us for a public event marking the end of our week-long fellowship in collaboration with HouseEurope! Here, the 19 fellows from around the world will present their findings and make their case for how to make extended producer responsibility and transformation the norm.
Shaping the Rules Ruling the Shape is a fellowship taking place in Copenhagen from 17-21 August made in collaboration with HouseEurope!.
It addresses a gap that is rarely discussed but constantly felt: the distance between the rules that shape how we build and the practice that decides what form our environment takes. Architects experience regulation as a constraint – a given from outside the discipline.
But architects should not remain on the receiving end of policy, but understand law and policy as material of design –something, to be studied, questioned and worked with the same way any other architectural design task is.
To mark the end of the fellowship, you’re invited to a public event where the fellows will share their findings with a panel of stakeholders from across the industry. Here, they will make their case for making extended producer responsibility the norm. After the presentations we will serve free, cold drinks.
The evening poses the question: What does it take for a diagnosis like this to travel beyond the room it was made in?
More about the Fellowship
Over the course of the week, fellows meet directly with the stakeholders – lawyers, regulators, developers, architects, suppliers, policy makers – who write and enforce the frameworks governing the industry and whose decisions the fellowship investigates.
Our goal is to understand the system in which they – we – operate, in order to identify both the levers and the force that could lead to change.
The program works through one concrete case of transformation: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which means that whoever produces a product remains responsible for it after use.
This principle already works in other industries. In the building sector, it barely exists: materials are extracted, assembled and, when a building is demolished, thrown away — taking with them the energy, labour and value embedded in them.
The technical solution is not the missing piece. It has been described, modelled and proven workable elsewhere for years. What is missing is what turns a technical solution into practice: policy, and the force to carry it.
