Association of Architecture Educators (AAE) 2025 Conference

About the conference

The Association of Architecture Educators (AAE) Conference 2025 will take place at the School of Architecture and Environment (R Block) at UWE Bristol from 9 to 12 July 2025. The conference theme is Nurture: Cultivating Care, Creativity, and Collaboration in Architecture.

Nurture: Cultivating Care, Creativity, and Collaboration in Architecture seeks to reflect on and nurture architecture as a process, practice, and pedagogy. In our rapidly changing world, architecture plays a crucial role in addressing environmental, political, economic, and cultural challenges. As practitioners and educators, understanding how we care, for what and for whom is a fundamental existential concern. What is our agency when almost all building activities cause some form of damage? How do we make decisions when we must balance impacts from multiple, often conflicting perspectives—planetary, social, economic, cultural, political, and more? What should be the hierarchy of our concerns? Moreover, how can we shift from viewing the world as a fixed and stable entity to seeing architecture as part of an ecosystem of shifting interdependencies? This conference will be a place to reflect on these issues, share knowledge of current and past radical or alternative models, and speculate on future forms of architecture and education.

Call for proposals

We welcome contributions that enhance understanding, challenge prevailing assumptions, nurture alternative approaches, push boundaries, cultivate collaborations, and explore and implement innovative ideas. Paper, panel, provocation and participatory workshop proposals may explore (but are not limited to) themes such as: 

• Caring for each other: We all play a role in nurturing students and academics in our schools and the profession. Architecture education, known for its intensity and high production, presents challenges, often felt most amongst those from marginalised groups. How can we create supportive models of education and practice that promote wellbeing and nurture thriving graduates? 
• Caring for architecture: Educators and professionals have a vital role in caring for the discipline and its future. Recent changes by professional bodies challenge established curricula, while systemic challenges in higher education require rethinking our approach practices How can we nurture our profession, learn from global transformations, and develop nurturing pedagogies that address contemporary challenges? 
• Caring for our environments: RIBA’s ‘The Way Ahead’ and the ARB’s ‘Tomorrow’s Architects’ highlight the need to prepare for a changing future. Post-pandemic, a new generation are creating new stories, engaged with issues of social justice, ecological breakdown, and resilient communities. Indigenous knowledge, with its deep understanding of ecosystems,  relations and cultures, offers valuable insights into global challenges. How do we nurture care across generations through our education and praxis? 

Conference contributions can include: 

• 2,500-word papers (inclusion in post-conference proceedings and a 20-minute presentation at the conference) 
• Workshop proposals (up to 1 hour in length) 
• Participatory events
• Provocations
• Debates
• Panel discussions
• A temporary built structure reflecting the idea of CARE as a launch space
• Screenings 
• A1 poster proposals (may include models if transported by author)

Other formats may be proposed in discussion with the organising committee. We are particularly interested in participatory events.

Abstracts will be double-blind peer reviewed by the AAE 2025 organising committee. All papers accepted for the conference will be included in full online proceedings published following the conference and selected authors will be invited to submit proposals for papers in a special issue of Charrette, the journal of the AAE.

Please submit your contribution by 19 January 2025 (extended deadline). If your abstract is accepted, you will receive notification of acceptance by 13 February 2025.

Submit your abstract

Programme

The conference programme will be available in due course.

Conference website