Dear colleagues,
On behalf of the European Association for Architectural Education, the Architectural Research Centers Consortium and the Polytechnic University of Valencia we wish that this statement finds you and your families more than well.
In the light of the development of the global health crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2, the organization announced weeks ago the postponement of the event to late autumn 2020. We remain firm in our commitment to the conference and today we would like to announce the new dates, the updated calendar and the flexibility and adaptability of its redesigned detailed agenda. We would also like to convey our most sincere apologies for delaying this announcement for so long. But a meaningful set of external factors, mostly related to the evolution of the global health crisis, required to be sufficiently defined in order to proceed to a final decision and its dissemination.
The event will be hosted from 11 to 14 November 2020 at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain.
Before the interruption produced by the lockdown conditions in many countries and the sudden and unexpected adjustment of face-to-face teaching to virtual teaching, the calendar of the event had completed many phases. By then, full papers and posters were being distributed among the Scientific Committee members for review. This process was stopped but will be resumed and completed in the forthcoming days after this announcement. In view of the meaningful postponement of the dates of the event, all not yet reached milestones have been postponed as displayed in the hereunder list:
• Acceptance confirmation for full papers, plenary sessions, and PhD
workshops: moves from March 30, 2020 to July 14, 2020.
• Deadline for submission of final papers, and posters: moves from April
27, 2020 to September 14, 2020.
• Early bird registration deadline: moves from April 28, 2020 to September
29, 2020.
• Cancellation deadline (to qualify for a refund): moves from May 26, 2020
to October 27, 2020.
• Registration closing: moves from June 8, 2020 to November 9, 2020.
• Conference opening: moves from June 10, 2020 to November 11, 2020.
• Conference closing: moves from June 13, 2020 to November 14, 2020.
Regarding the detailed agenda of the event, it hadn’t been displayed on the website yet. But the existing draft has been completely redesigned according to the needs of the current situation. All face-to-face paper and posters presentation parallel sessions have been transformed into virtual parallel sessions conveniently placed in the European afternoon and American morning. The opening and closing ceremony, and the first keynote speaker have been also scheduled in the same time slot and will also be developed online. During the conference days it will be possible to follow these online activities in the rooms conveniently prepared by the organization at our school. Finally, those activities which inevitably have been placed in the European morning will be broadcast in life streaming, and recorded and immediately uploaded to the website of the event. As can be seen, this design considers many scenarios. If physical attendance is not permitted in mid-November, the online segments will be developed normally, the life streaming segments will be developed online and the social agenda will be cancelled. By contrast, if physical attendance is permitted in mid-November, European fellows who decide to come to Valencia will be able to follow the online segments in our rooms, to attend the life streaming segments in our auditorium and to enjoy the social agenda. Online and life streaming segments will keep this modality even if the global health crisis were fully solved in November. Therefore, American fellows and those Europeans who prefer to follow the event virtually will be able to do so even if physical attendance were feasible.
In the coming days, the website will be accordingly updated and will display the fees for the online attendance option. Once having chosen your registration modality between "face-to face" and "online", if you happen to wish to change it, we are pleased to announce that this will be certainly possible with no extra charge or penalty.
All the best,
Ivan Cabrera i Fausto
EAAE-ARCC International Conference Chair