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Our Common Space

Jordi Ludevid, my predecessor, a good friend and colleague, asked me as dean of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia to write a foreword for his book A City of Professions. For me, it is both a duty and a pleasure. There is no doubt that one of the association’s objectives is to give visibility to its professionals and their research. It is also a pleasure because Jordi Ludevid, an architect who has held every possible institutional post over 20 long years, and I have long shared a firm commitment to our beloved profession: architecture.

The structure and the summary of the book demonstrate the immense and original work it offers to us all. Where words bridge gaps and silences undermine, we have been silent for too long. From Hippocrates to Max Weber, understanding our origins has made us more human. Professional practice today shows us how the boundaries between different professional disciplines are blurring. And it also shows us how transversality is taking place in neighbourhoods and cities. And how professionals are joining forces, sharing and generating knowledge to respond to the needs of the present and, especially, of future generations.

In parallel, Jordi Ludevid describes a positive and important story for our profession as artisans of habitability: the main guarantor of the development of a modern institutional and professional project. Through a very detailed, in-depth and global analysis, he gives visibility to the professions, vindicating them as an integral and indispensable part of society – a part that is often invisible, forgotten or simply unrecognised. He describes six missions that support the participation of professionals as essential to the proper functioning of society because they provide practical knowledge and civic responsibility.

The analysis of the current reality of professional associations provides concepts to be debated in order to define the future of professional organisations in our current context. The tools are deontology, self-regulation and prescription at the European level. And it falls to all of us to recognise the process of individualisation that is resulting, among other effects, in the diversification of the modes of professional practice. The underlying problem is the «real» reality, the civic knowledge that professionals represent; it is the citizenry, it is the city.

Professions and progress, as this book shows us, go hand in hand. From this convergence we discover how the role of professionals is and will remain key in the definition of medium and long-term social strategies characterised by innovation, creativity and the contribution of added value in a world that is facing pressing challenges.

The fight against climate change, social inequalities or the creation of sustainable communities are some of these challenges, already recognised among the Sustainable Development Goals. And the professions have a very important role to play in solving them. Cities are the setting and the point of intersection where all the resources must be employed with maximum agility and precision, with maximum efficiency. Today, as humanity is immersed in the struggle against the COVID-19 health crisis and the associated economic crisis, this book offers an exciting narrative and lays out paths that give us hope.

Thus, we should applaud it and give thanks for the generosity of the effort that went into this book and its content, which is unprecedented and original – and also necessary. In response, the COAC is reasserting its commitment to continue building bridges of collaboration with all the professions. After all, architecture is a spatial art, an art of space, where we all come together, where human rights and global challenges are decided and substantiated: the city. As we are all a part of the necessary change, there is no time to lose. Thank you, Jordi.

Assumpció Puig i Hors

Dean of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia