Formed officially in 1981 but with intellectual roots back in the Sixties at the time of the architectural psychology movement, IAPS is a multidisciplinary and active association which gathers researchers and practitioners from around the world, with a shared interest in people’s interaction with their environment. Psychology, sociology, geography, design and planning are only a few of the disciplines represented and for these and their representatives, IAPS serves both as a platform for disciplinary discussion, and as a platform for collaboration. Detailed areas of work include: spatial cognition and wayfinding; ecological aspects of human actions in places; evaluation of buildings and natural landscapes; design of, and experiences in, workplaces, schools, residences, public buildings and public spaces; social use of space: crowding, privacy, territoriality, personal space; leisure and tourism behavior in relation to physical settings; meaning of built environments; theories of place, place attachment, and place identity; resource crises and environmental research; risks and hazards: their perception and management; urban design and urban regeneration, landscape design and their impact on quality of life. 

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For more information, visit the IAPS website (https://iaps-association.org/about-iaps/)

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IAPS 2022 retakes climate change, its challenges and impacts as a major issue in current societies. It assumes that the increasingly visible and unavoidable impacts of a changing climate are already recasting several dimensions of our way of living and that additional knowledge is needed of in-motion transitions as well as innovative arrangements to tackle this central issue. Portugal is at the forefront of sustainable interventions and innovations in several domains, such as renewable energy generation, nature-based solutions, and biodiversity conservation. The environmental conflicts reveal that we need greater reflection, discussion and solutions in three interrelated areas: governance, sustainability and consumption. However, both Portuguese urban and rural environments are producing some of the most important and heated current debates concerning people-environment studies, namely regarding gentrification and touristification; the low carbon transition; and adaptation to climate change (e.g., sea level rise; loss of biodiversity).

IAPS 2022 will address the challenges of these three themes.

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