2026 AASA/ACSA International Conference

Architecture’s expanding remit is now difficult to disentangle from forces that operate across borders, disciplines, and temporal scales. As environmental conditions, technological systems, cultural identities and political realities intersect in uneven and often contradictory ways, the profession is increasingly asked to work within complexity rather than to simplify it. The 2026 AASA/ACSA International Conference takes this condition as its primary premise, framing “planetary challenges” not as a single problem set to be solved, but as entangled circumstances that exceed conventional architectural boundaries and resist straightforward resolution. Within this framing, architectural and urban thought is positioned as inherently implicated in shared global futures—futures shaped simultaneously by material practices, environmental dynamics, cultural formations, technological change, and contested political terrain.

Under the umbrella theme Planetary Practice: Architectures of a Shared Global Future, the conference signals a deliberate shift away from crisis-driven rhetoric and towards approaches described as reflective, generative, and speculative. Rather than prescribing a unified methodology, “planetary practice” is presented as a broad field of design-led knowledge-making and collaboration: a way of thinking and working that tests how design can open pathways of inquiry when faced with large-scale complexity. The conference highlights how pedagogy, research, design experimentation, and built work can shape futures across multiple scales, suggesting that architectural agency may be measured as much by the questions it raises as by the solutions it delivers.

This position is sharpened through an emphasis on contributions that challenge conventional categories, connect across disciplines and cultures, and develop new imaginaries for practice amid “planetary entanglement”. The program is organised into four thematic tracks—Planetary Pedagogies, Tools for Planetary Design, Planetary Cultures, and Situated Practices at Scale—each offering a distinct lens while remaining linked by the shared proposition that design operates as a critical mode of inquiry. Collectively, the tracks frame contemporary architectural work as both situated and scalable: attentive to local conditions and specific communities, yet conscious of broader systems and interdependencies that shape those conditions.

The conference is co-presented by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia (AASA), reinforcing its stated intent to convene discourse across contexts and territories. Its steering committee is led by co-chairs John Doyle (RMIT University) and Kirsty Volz (Queensland University of Technology), alongside José Gámez (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) and Michael Monti (ACSA). By setting out a platform for cross-cutting inquiry—across teaching, tools, culture, and scale—the conference positions planetary practice as an agenda for architectural work that is intellectually rigorous, materially grounded, and attuned to the conditions of a shared global future.