2023 Edition

Program

Shaping the City Forum: Housing and Community for a Shared Future
21-22 November 2025
Palazzo Michiel

Following the success of previous editions in Venice, Chicago and New Orleans, Shaping the City returned to the floating city for two days of conversations focusing on housing and community. The sixth edition of the conference, curated by ECC Italy in the context of its biennial architecture exhibition Time Space Existence, took place at Palazzo Michiel on 21 and 22 November 2025, and was streamed online on the YouTube channel of ECC Italy.

The event brought together local and international academics, urban planners, designers, architects, policymakers and organisations, with the aim to address challenges facing today’s cities and their communities. The conference recognised the crucial role that architecture and urban planning play in shaping people’s interaction with their cities and their well-being.

This year’s conference turned its focus to two of the most urgent and interconnected challenges facing cities today: housing and community. Across the globe, from long-established urban cores to emerging cities at the frontlines of growth, questions of affordability, resilience, and belonging are reshaping how communities are living together. By bringing to the table examples of housing models and community-led initiatives from different contexts around the world, this year’s edition of the forum highlighted how shared struggles, rising inequality, climate pressures, and spatial fragmentation, are met with innovative responses that blend design, governance, and civic agency. The conversations emphasised that housing and community are not separate entities, but deeply intertwined foundations for building more just, inclusive, and sustainable urban futures.

Livestream

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Programme

Day One
21 November 2025
Friday

2.30 pm CET
Registration & Coffee

3.00 pm CET
Opening Remarks by ECC Italy team

3.30 pm CET
Keynote Speech Architecture as a Care Act by Tatiana Bilbao (Founding Partner and Director, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO / Charles Gwathmey Professor of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture)

4.30 pm CET
PANEL 1 | LIVING TOGETHER: HOUSING AS A COLLECTIVE PROJECT

Presentation 1 – Housing as a Communal Project by Heather Woofter (Dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin)
Presentation 2 – Vienna – Housing for All by Michael Obrist (University Professor and Head of department, TU Vienna / Founding partner, feld72 architects) & Sabine Pollak (Partner, Köb&Pollak Architecture, Vienna)
Presentation 3 – Renovate – Don’t Speculate! by Ludwig Engel (Partner, HouseEurope! gGmbH)

Panel Conversation led by Hadi El Hage (Coordinator of Public Programmes at ECC Italy) & Lucia Pedrana (Head of University Relations at ECC Italy)

6.00 pm CET
BOOK PRESENTATION

UNVEILING THE UNSEEN by Faisal Alohali (Architect) & Abdullah Alsanea (Architect, Foster + Partners)

6.40 pm CET
Closing Remarks by ECC Italy team

6.50 pm CET
Aperitivo at Palazzo Bembo

Day Two
22 November 2025
Saturday

9.30 am CET
Registration & Coffee

10.00 am CET
Opening Remarks & First Day Recap by ECC Italy team

10.15 am CET
PANEL 2 | BUILDING BELONGING: HOUSING AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE COMMON GOOD

Presentation 1 – Porch: An Architecture of Generosity – American Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennial by Peter B. MacKeith (Dean, Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, Arkansas University / Curator of American Pavilion 2025)
Presentation 2 – Life in Vienna and the Future Concept of Digital Humanism. Sustainable, Inclusive, Useful by Wolfgang Renner (Vienna Municipality)
Presentation 3 – Party Wall Common – Collective Forms of Living by Petra Kempf (Asst. Prof. Washington University in St. Louis)
Presentation 4 – Building Belonging at Scale: Housing, Community Partnership, and Common Good at Morgan State University by coleman a. jordan [ebo] (Asst. Prof., Morgan State University)

Panel Conversation led by Rebecca Bott-Knutson (Dean, Virginia Tech Honors College)

11.55 am CET
PANEL 3 | ARCHITECTURE AS ENCOUNTER: FORM, MATERIALITY, AND THE SPACE OF LIVING

Presentation 1 – Axi:Ome on Transforming the City, by Sung Ho Kim (Director, Architecture and Urban Design Program, Kent State University / Co-Director, Axi:Ome)
Presentation 2 – NOLLI REVISITED: Redefining the Commons through Material Cultures by Juan José Castellón (Co-Founder, xmade GmbH / Ass. Prof., School of Architecture, Rice University)
Presentation 3 – Reconnection through Architecture – Landscapes of Learning and Sharing in Tianshui by Keiichiro Sako (Founder and Principal Architect, Sako Architects)

Panel Conversation led by Heather Woofter (Dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin)

1.05 pm CET
Closing Remarks by ECC Italy team

1.10 pm CET
Lunch Break

2.30 pm CET
Remarks by ECC Italy team

2.45 pm CET
PANEL 4 | RETHINKING HOME: INNOVATION, AFFORDABILITY, AND THE FUTURE OF LIVING

Presentation 1 – A User-Centric Framework for Affordable and Accessible Housing Community Design by Yimei Chan (Co-Founder and Design Director, LOD)
Presentation 2 – Home sweet home metropolis by Erik Pasveer (Urban Planner, former head of Strategy Department of Urban Planning and Sustainability, City of Amsterdam, IFHP)
Presentation 3 – Protecting the Commons in Parisian Co-ownership Housing by Anne Der Haroutiounian (Architect & Head of Research, Atelier MAS / Secretary, Association Droits et Habitats – Paris)
Presentation 4 – Home as a Living Lab by Enric Ruiz Geli (Co-Curator of “unEarthed / Second Nature / PoliNATION”, Professor of Practice Virginia Tech Honors College and Founder, Cloud 9)
Presentation 5 – Yimby – California Housing Crisis Act by John Myefski (President and Founding Principal, Myefski Architects)

Panel Conversation led by Hadi El Hage (Coordinator of Public Programmes at ECC Italy) & Lucia Pedrana (Head of University Relations at ECC Italy)

4.40 pm CET
PANEL 5 | ARCHITECTURE OF PLACE: LOCAL GROUNDS & SITUATED PRACTICES

Presentation 1 – Quito Fragmented: Weaving a Shared Understanding of the City by Maria Isabel Paz (Professor of Architecture, Universidad San Francisco de Quito / Founder, Materia Arquitectura)
Presentation 2 – Reconnecting with the land: the challenge facing Canada’s northern communities by Marc Blouin (Co-founder, Blouin Orzes Architectes)
Presentation 3 – Curating Togo’s first Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale by Jeanne Autran-Edorh (Co-founder and Principal Architect, Studio NEiDA)

Panel Conversation led by Fabiola Büchele (Co-founder and Studio Director, Studio NEiDA)

5.40 pm CET
Closing Keynote Speech HOME(S) by Mads Birgens (Head of Urbanism, Cobe)

6.40 pm CET
Closing Remarks by ECC Italy team

6.50 pm CET
Aperitivo at Palazzo Mora

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Speakers

Tatiana Bilbao

Founding Partner and Director, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO / Charles Gwathmey Professor of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture