The New Enlightenment: Shaping Sustainability of Tomorrow. Future Thinking for Regions, Cities, Architecture and AI for Physical Environments

Sustainability, once rooted in local knowledge, place-making, and environmental conditions, has become increasingly detached from its cultural and ecological foundations.
The Panel at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York reconsiders sustainability as a cultural project, drawing on Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture Without Architects (1964) and contemporary research such as HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate.
Bringing together perspectives from Austria and the United States, the discussion explores how vernacular knowledge, environmental intelligence, and contemporary design practices can contribute to new paradigms of ecological living—where social equity, cultural specificity, and spatial imagination converge.

In this context, Zerina Džubur represents a young European perspective on architecture as a cultural practice situated at the intersection of social, political, economic, and environmental negotiations. Together with Karin Oberhuber, she is co-director of Haus der Architektur in Graz, where she curates a programme of exhibitions, discussions, and interdisciplinary formats. Her work positions architecture as an open and accessible field of thought.
Through European networks such as the LINA Platform, she engages with emerging practices, resource-conscious strategies, working with existing structures, and questions of access, participation, and inclusion. She is also a member of the Cultural Advisory Board of the City of Graz and actively involved in Austria’s Baukultur networks, advocating for architecture as a key tool in shaping more sustainable futures.

Panel: 
Sandra Piesik, Barry Bergdoll, Gernot Riether & Zerina Džubur
Input Zerina Džubur:
Beyond the Object: Architecture as a Shared Cultural Practice
YOSTAR presentation:
Petra Kickenweitz & Claudia Gerhäusser

The panel discussion takes place as part of the current exhibition Dietmar Feichtinger: Architecture of Connection at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.