The UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona (UIA2026BCN) launches the International Emerging Workshop, a Congress’s special format designed for students and young practitioners to engage in a real-time laboratory led by twelve emerging architectural practices.

The open call invites local and international participants to join a week-long design investigation, setting the stage for the main event. The program includes public lectures, conversations with workshop leaders and site visits across the city. 

Participants will be organised into twelve groups of up to fifteen people each, working collaboratively at Les Tres Xemeneies de Sant Adrià de Besòs, one of the most emblematic post-industrial sites in the Barcelona metropolitan area, fostering cross- cultural and interdisciplinary exchange. The workshop will take place from 19 to 27 June, just one week before the main event. 

Barcelona as a Wicked Laboratory

Barcelona has long been a dynamic testing ground where architecture, urbanism and social life intersect to drive systemic transformation. Today, its capacity for reinvention faces urgent and unresolved challenges: climate change and rising heat, mass tourism and gentrification, a shortage of affordable housing and the depletion of material and ecological resources. At the same time, processes of globalization test the resilience of cultural identity, raising questions about how local practices and traditions can adapt without being diluted.

These tensions mirror planetary-scale crises, calling for new ways of thinking about space. The city is not seen as a fixed model, but as a wicked laboratory where design can explore physical, social and ecological challenges. This context provides fertile ground for the UIA2026BCN theme Becoming. Architectures for a Planet in Transition, which calls for spatial practices that embrace time as a design tool and promotes transformation processes that are ecological, material, poetic and political.

Workshop Leaders

Twelve recognised, emerging international practices will lead the workshops, each one bringing a distinct research focus grounded in their ongoing work and tied to the six pillars of Becoming. The twelve practices are: 

• Simulaa (Australia) ‘Additions and Adaptations’ – Becoming More-Than-Human

•  Design Earth (Lebanon/Algeria) ‘Brava!’ – Becoming More-Than-Human

• Mio Tsuneyama and Fuminori Nousaku (Japan) ‘Making Knots, Weaving Shed’ – Becoming Circular

• Nicolas Dorval-Bory Architectes (France) ‘The coolest summer of the rest of our lives’ – Becoming Circular

• Nuno Melo Sousa (Portugal) ‘One, two, three, more, many tables’ – Becoming Embodied

• TEN Studio (Serbia/Switzerland) ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better’ – Becoming Embodied

• Assemble (UK) ‘Merchants & Warriors’ – Becoming Interdependent

• Plan Común (Chile/France) ‘In between Commons BCN’ – Becoming Interdependent

• Bangkok Tokyo Architecture (Thailand/Japan) ‘Collective Completions’ – Becoming Attuned 

• Bear (Spain) ‘Elements of dissidence’ – Becoming Attuned

• Ibiye Camp (Nigeria-UK) ‘Revised Cartographies’ – Becoming Hyper-Conscious

• Common Accounts (Spain/Canada) ‘Parade!’ – Becoming Hyper-Conscious

Process and elegibility 

The workshop is open to students of architecture and related disciplines from all over the world, as well as to recent graduates who completed their studies in 2020 or later.

Applications must be submitted through the official Congress website including an academic CV, a portfolio with three selected works and the ranked studio preferences. There is no application fee.

The Selection Committee, composed of members of the curatorial team and the UIA Scientific Committee will review portfolios looking for design excellence, originality and innovative thinking.

Selected participants will be contacted to confirm their place. A participation fee will be required, covering the workshop, shared materials and full access to the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026.

Fellowships will be available, and details will be announced shortly.

Calendar

31 October 2025 – Workshop launch 

 10 January 2026 – Portfolio submission deadline 

 31 January 2026 – Announcement of selected participants 

 15 February 2026 – Payment deadline 

 19 June 2026 – Workshop start 

 27 June 2026 – Workshop final presentation and exhibition 

 28 June - 2 July 2026 – UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona 

Applications must be submitted through the official Congress website

https://uia2026bcn.org/interna...

For any questions regarding the application process, please contact

[email protected]