UNESCO Chair : report of activities 2020-2024

The UNESCO Chair in Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures and Sustainable Development, created in 1998, is held by the CRAterre team of the Architecture, Environments and Building Cultures research unit at the Grenoble School of Architecture, France. CRAterre is working to gain recognition for the earth material and, more broadly, to make the most of all local resources (materials, skills, knowledge and methods of organisation). To achieve this, it is pursuing three major general objectives: i) to make better use of local human, natural and material resources; ii) to improve housing and living conditions; and iii) to enhance heritage and cultural diversity.

This approach is supported by the 34 member institutions of the Chair’s network, which intend to disseminate this knowledge to higher education establishments in order to rethink globally and locally the use of our planet’s resources, as part of a genuine technical, cultural, social, economic and environmental challenge.

This report presents the results of the activities of the UNESCO Chair and its network (period 2020-2023) in comparison with the previous period. It should be noted that we were not able to receive reports from all the members of the network (17/34) and that, as a result, this report is not exhaustive of the work carried out by the Chair and its network. It should also be mentioned that this period was characterised by the effects of the global pandemic in different ways in each region.

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