Participants of the conference shall give answers to the question: What Architectural Students Should Know About Social and Cultural Issues. Thus, the reflection must go beyond the (very important) instrumental and technical aspects of architectural production. It also must leave behind mere preoccupations with aesthetics. Since architecture puts into form what does not belong to architecture, the conference is about grounding architectural thinking. Participants shall give solid interpretations (in the scientific manner outlined) of what kind of knowledge is necessary nowadays to create solutions to the problems we are confronted with. Best practice examples will help to illustrate intellectual concepts. In every case, the focus is on how to create intellectual foundations for architectural and urbanistic work. Therefore, the main concern of the conference, What Architectural Students Should Know About Social and Cultural Issues, leads to the fundamental question of how the profession sees itself nowadays. This discussion is necessary in view of the changed living and working conditions after the times of affluence. We must talk because dwelling - ­­as Heidegger put it in a comprehensive sense affecting all areas of life¹ -­­ is at stake in a social and cultural sense.

The participants of the conference are experts in social and cultural questions regarding architecture and urbanism. Given the worldwide problems, they will reflect ways of collaborative thinking and community-based planning as a fundamental step towards creating livable neighborhoods and cities for all. An important point in this discussion will be the reflection on gender and a social city to create. Since any transformation nowadays must deal with climate change a central focus will lie on how social and cultural reliability of planners-who form space for all and not for the few-can be connected to the reduction of means (of planning, and construction) available. The task is to create an intellectual horizon that allows a positive approach to the present challenges. However, this also means to reflect on the past and where we come from. Without this, the present situation remains in the dark.

1 Heidegger 1951, 141: "Die Art, wie du bist und ich bin, die Weise, nach der wir Menschen auf der Welt sind, ist das Bauen, das Wohnen." / Engl.: Heidegger 1971, 145: "The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is Bauen, dwelling.", from: Heidegger, Martin (1971): Building Dwelling Thinking. In: Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971, 141-159.