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PR 11/25 | KTP marks World Architecture Day 2025: Reiterates call for National Architecture Policy

Verżjoni bil-Malti

The Kamra tal-Periti (KTP) joins architects worldwide in celebrating World Architecture Day 2025, established by the International Union of Architects (UIA). This year’s theme, “Design for Strength”, calls on architects to embrace approaches that enable the built environment to withstand, adapt, and regenerate while promoting equity, continuity, and resilience.

At a time when Malta’s planning system has once again become the subject of public controversy, this theme resonates profoundly. The recent debates surrounding the government’s proposed planning law reforms have reignited public frustration over overdevelopment, the erosion of environmental quality, and the growing disconnection between planning policy and public wellbeing.

Yet, amid the polarisation between developers and environmental activists, architecture – the very discipline that shapes the spaces we live in – has been completely sidelined.

For decades, Malta has been burdened with a planning system designed to legalise architecture rather than enable it. A system that seeks to codify design into rules and formulas, believing that good architecture can be legislated into existence. It cannot.

While legal certainty is essential for regulating processes, it is anathema to the creative and contextual nature of architecture. Laws may provide clarity for lawyers defending or contesting permits, but they do little to support architects striving to create spaces that uplift communities, respect context, and enhance the environment. The evidence of this failure is visible in every corner of our towns and landscapes.

KTP notes with dismay the mockery expressed in public debate toward proposals aimed at elevating spatial, architectural, and contextual considerations in planning decisions. These are not subjective whims; they are the very foundation of high-quality, resilient, and meaningful built environments.

To “Design for Strength” in Malta, we must first design for integrity – of our profession, our institutions, and our public spaces. True resilience in the built environment requires a vision that transcends short-term interests and procedural certainty. It requires a commitment to architecture as a cultural, social, and environmental act.

For this reason, on this World Architecture Day, the Kamra tal-Periti reiterates its long-standing call for Government to partner with it for the development of a National Architecture Policy for Malta – one of only two European countries that still lacks such a framework. This policy would establish a national vision for architecture, urban design, and placemaking rooted in quality, sustainability, and cultural identity.

 

A City of a Thousand Gardens by Openworks Studio – Winner of the President’s Award for Best Overall Project at the 2024 edition of Premju Emanuele Luigi Galizia

 

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PR 09/24 | Kamra tal-Periti calls for Freedom Square to be handed back to the public on World Architecture Day

The theme of this year’s World Architecture Day, celebrated every first Monday of October across the world, is “Empowering the next generation to participate in urban design”.

It is a day on which the Kamra tal-Periti calls on all citizens, and in particular policy makers, to reflect on the state of architecture on our islands.

The Kamra has always been vociferous about the importance of promoting high quality architecture to ensure a better quality of life for all. It most recently gave a concrete example of how to achieve such an aim, by publishing a proposal for an urban park in the heart of Msida to visually demonstrate to the public that this is indeed possible, and to challenge public authorities on outdated vision for our islands.

However, if there is one intervention in Malta’s public space that symbolically embodies the disregard, verging on contempt, with which architecture and the work of architects is generally held, it is the blight around Freedom Square upon which the parliament building designed by Renzo Piano stands.

The fact that such ignominy is carried out at the behest of the highest democratic institution in the country, just underscores the dire state of architecture and the long road towards achieving the cultural sensibilities and basic educational standards necessary to truly begin to understand and address the issues surrounding quality of public space and general wellbeing.

Renzo Piano’s Parliament Building and the surrounding urban space were designed to promote transparency of the democratic processes. The permanently installed barriers that are erected around this building completely reverse the design intent of the architect, and instead places a physical separation between the electors and the elected, a gap which the design sought to eradicate.

The irony of this situation is further compounded by the fact that the institution that is entrusted by the Constitution to enact the laws of the land, is brazenly breaching several provisions of the same laws its members have passed inside that very building.

We call upon all the responsible public institutions, starting of course from the Speaker of the House, but also the Planning Authority, Lands Authority, and Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation, among many others, to uphold their obligations in the law and return Freedom Square to the public to whom they ultimately should hold their allegiance.

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