While we are here, what can we do?

Gunther De Graeve: “The question we asked was: while we are here, what can we do? How can we make the link between the organisation of our congress and the location? Can we find common ground with local projects, to help support them? For that we look at the presentations that are programmed for our congress.

Can we link those studies to local projects that benefit from the results? In this way, you help local projects move forward, while at the same time you stimulate your own experts to focus their study more on legacy. And a great side-effect: you involve the local community more strongly with your congress, because they pluck the fruit of it. Incidentally, that makes it a lot easier to recruit local community volunteers which you always need for your congress.”

Gunther De Graeve: “You can also build legacy in education. Our congress brings together two professions: design and health. In response to our congress in Milan, the local university built a laboratory where architect students follow part of their course in medicine and the other way round. In the United States, a faculty was founded which couples neuroscience with architecture. There this is about the use of colours in buildings and the effect of that on your brain. A new study course that starts up or new subjects that are included in a course: that is also legacy.

Ann Decock: “Even the duration of your congress can have impact on your legacy. Now a congress lasts on average four days. Your delegates arrive, they are submerged for four days in the material and then they leave again. Generally they are exhausted by the time they arrive home and then they have to spend time catching up with all the work that has been left undone. In other words: they don’t get the chance to process the knowledge they have acquired, and after several weeks, everything has been forgotten. So you can rightly ask the question: why can’t a congress last for two weeks? Your delegates arrive. They follow the sessions spread farther apart and, in the meantime, keep abreast of their work. In this way, you don’t build up to peak exhaustion, but absorb the knowledge gradually, so that you can process and even apply it immediately to the work you are doing at the congress location.”