Our world is experiencing a realignment of political and trade relations while our climate emergency continues, temperatures are rising and artificial intelligence is expanding its impact exponentially across all spheres, challenging our existing social order, our built environment and indeed how we practice as architects. To be most effective in addressing these issues and the impact they have on how we practice, we must look to engage the breadth of our membership as well as our colleagues across the globe to develop both the best strategies and the most durable and sustainable outcomes.
Our International Chapter is uniquely placed to provide a framework to facilitate such valuable discourse with fellow professional institutes. The Chapter is a vibrant cohort of members dispersed across the globe who capably reach out across great distances to engage with other cultures and technologies, promoting Australian architecture while supporting each other. The International Chapter includes members residing overseas as well as members residing within Australia but working overseas, and is actually larger than several chapters within our borders. On the initiative of the International Chapter
Council, this year’s awards event was recently held in the Australian Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo 2025. The Council’s objective was to engage with the activity and celebration of international relations at the World Expo that is held once every five years and endorse Australian architects reaching out and engaging beyond our shores while celebrating the best of members’ work outside of Australia. Aside from presenting as an active member of the international community, the expo presents as an opportunity to encourage greater engagement with Australia. Indeed, the most recent Expo data shows that there have been more than 1 million visits to the Australian pavilion over the first two months of the six-month exposition, representing over 10% of total visits to the Expo and hence a great interest in Australia.
Importantly the event also offered the opportunity to engage with Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Australian Embassy in Japan, the Japan Institute of Architects (JIA) and the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) to enable an informative discourse on issues effecting Japan and Australia. The Awards themselves were a showcase of the great work our members are undertaking across the world and underlined to government officials present the reality that architectural services are a major Australian export commodity. International Chapter and other Institute members flew from around the world to be part of the celebrations with architectural awards presented to projects across every continent (except Antarctica).
I was privileged in my role as National President Elect, together with our CEO, Cameron Bruhn, to attend the awards evening to support the International Chapter while promoting the work of the Institute. While there we met with the cultural attache of the Australian Embassy and discussed the opportunities for members to engage in government
sponsored international developments such as the Expo programme. It is appropriate to note that the next expo, Expo 2030, to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is being master planned by a collaboration involving Australian architects and engineers. We also met with the Japanese Institute of Architects leadership, led by President Naomi Sato, to discuss areas of shared interest such as sustainability, artificial intelligence, revitalizing engagement with regional members, international cooperation through l’Union Internationale des Architectes/International Union of Architects (UIA), ARCASIA as well as member engagement with government. The opportunities for future cooperation between Japan and Australia are much evident. A fifty year ‘Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation’ between Australia and Japan signed by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Miki on 16 June 1976 is due to be renewed next year, with formalities in August 2026, so this is a pivotal time to reinvigorate architectural collaboration.
The following weekend in Brisbane, I met with the American Institute of Architects President Elect Illya Azaroff. Illya is an inspirational practitioner in the field of disaster relief as well as an internationally recognized leader in disaster mitigation, adaptation, regenerative design and resilient planning strategies, and was in Queensland to speak at the 2025 Disaster & Emergency Management Conference. Illya has practised and advised in many places that have experienced natural catastrophes across the Pacific, Americas and Europe. The AIA has over 100,000 members and enormous capacity to contribute to the built environment at a multitude of levels. We discussed topics including regional engagement, architects work in the field of natural disasters, sustainability, institute foundations and the contribution our profession can make to the discourse of our global community. Our own National President, Adam Haddow, recently requested observer status in the AIA/RIBA working group that is developing ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence in architecture.
The international architectural community has a great breadth of knowledge that benefits from diverse communication channels to enable a greater knowledge base and further improvement of our professional skillsets. The missional strategy of the Institute is to support our members to be more effective, ethical and engaged in our provision of architectural services and in the broader pursuit of designing more liveable and sustainable environments. Our engagement with the breadth of our own membership, whether international, regional or city based, in addition to our colleagues across the globe, can only enhance our collective wisdom and action on the pertinent issues of today.
Regards,
David Wagner FRAIA
National President Elect
Australian Institute of Architects
