The Asian Congress of Architects (ACA) is a major regional congress held every two years that take the form of a large international congress for fostering intellectual exchange and strategic discussion on regional challenges, initiatives, and development amongst hundreds of architects. ACA 20 as proposed by the United Architects of the Philippines highlights the need for a world that transcends to the future as we enter a better normal.  It brings to focus the Asian response to transformative change introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which aims “to build a new culture: one that embraces complexity, actively manages risk, continually adapts and seeks to learn alongside delivering results” amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The word “weaving” conjures up myraid images, symbols, and ideas. When we transcend our more common, explicit understanding of it as a way to describe how objects are constructed, we start to see how it may also have a deeper meaning: that neatly-woven mats are very strong and resilient to most kinds of pressures.  Weaving is also about culture interconnected to a place’s biodiversity, the fusion of influences and how that shapes history, and collaboration as a way to work, create, and invent.

The congress theme provides a creative statement that exposes the art of weaving into a call to action.