Dear students, professors, volunteers, I welcome you to this special week, to the sketchcity week.

The topic of this week is resilience, I believe, resilience as a core concept of our future. Resilience is the capacity of a system to recover from perturbations, von Störungen.

Maybe you are not aware, in our Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, die Bundesverfassung, is written within the General Provisions, «It shall promote the common welfare, sustainable development, internal cohesion and cultural diversity of the country.”

“Sie fördert die gemeinsame Wohlfahrt, die nachhaltige Entwicklung, den inneren Zusammenhalt und die kulturelle Vielfalt des Landes.”

So sustainable development seems to be very important, I would say crucial.

And within the Federal Act on Funding and Coordination of the Swiss Higher Education Sector, this is nothing else than the most important, highest ranked rule / law for our applied university of Chur, there is written, a quality management system is needed, and within this system the University has to prove, to offer, to show a system, which “tasks further the aims of economic, social and environmental sustainability”. “Also die Aufgaben müssen im “Einklang mit einer wirtschaftlich, sozial und ökologisch nachhaltigen Entwicklung erfüllt warden”
Without such activities, there is no founding of the University from the state.

This week, our activities are going in these directions. It is a must, but also a pleasure to work on such topics.

Resilience as a common concept of Nature, it is so complex, that nearly no technical device, no innovation from a human being is able to use this concept in the same manner, but we should use it. Without this concept we wouldn’t be here, life would not survive millions of years on this earth. So why not to try to use, to apply this concept to cities, not to survive millions of ears, but to readjust unwonted development. We speak here from Resilience within 10 up to 30 years, to bring live quality back to our cities.

I would like to give my honour to several people, without them we wouldn’t be here.

A special thanks to Rick and Floris. Our partner and enabler here in Rotterdam.

As well many flowers for our Coaches, Andreas and Carmen.

Last but not least to Tanja Hess, initiator and inventor of this week!
And as well thank you, thank you to all of you for your openness, interest and participation. I look forward to seeing your innovations end of the week.
Have a great time!

Go to Day 1: What does it mean to be a „resilient city“?