A Fruitful General Assembly in Antwerp, the 15th of Sept 2018

The annual General Assembly of ECIA – hosted by AINB – took place in Belgium, in the historic building of Antwerp University. We were happy to have over 40 delegates from 18 National Organisations and also lucky to meet the new colleagues from Federal Chamber of German Architects (BAK), Malta (MIDA), Bulgaria and Ireland Cork Institute for the first time and in GA. The representatives of IFI (International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers) joined in the morning meeting to introduce the worldwide developments in our professional field. The General Assembly up-dated the work of the board during 2017–2018: the meetings, membership developments, education program, European matters, elected new board members and re-elected the president.

The topic of Round Table discussion 2018: Relation between education and profession gave an overview of short history about the activities of ECIA for education of Interior Architecture/Design in Europe andposed different questions about the relation between education and profession in the different member countries. During an Interactive Workshop were posed several questions: who defines and develops the profession of Interior Architecture /Design? What is the added value of collaboration between professionals and education and is there a need for an IA educators network? Significant data was collected by our national organisations about ongoing situation in relation of professionals – education – research in different European countries. ECIA board gave an overview about Explorative meeting European edicational platform hosted by Antwerp University the day before.

The delegates enjoyed the well organised GA with hospitality of the hosts and refreshing collaboration between each other. AINB had organised a great programm with an architectural biking tourfor the delegates of GA which started with the visits to a house/office of an architect & interior architect couple Cuypers & Q architecten and to Gallery Valerie Traan. On Sunday we biked through the newest developed part of the city, old harbour “Eilandje” with the architectural highlights: MAS (Architect Neutelings/Riedijk), Havenhuis (Zaha Hadid Architects), Diener&Diener (Architect Chipperfield, Tony Fretton), Bike bridge (Laurent Ney engineers), NoA architecten, Park Spoor Noord (Secchi Viggano), WDT loods (Verdikt & Verdikt).

Dear participants – thank you for the great job in the ECIA General Assembly in Antwerp, it was a gorgeous weekend!

We are looking forward to meet you all at the next ECIA General Assembly in Spain, Sept 2019.