The Department of Architecture at EPOKA University organized the Fourth International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design (4-ICAUD), which took place on November 24 – 26, 2021 in Tirana, Albania. Building upon the success of the previous three editions of ICAUD, the conference provided a wide range of topics on architecture and urban design and an international audience of academics and practitioners from around the world. The 4-ICAUD provided an international forum for knowledge exchange, where 82 scientific researches were presented by academicians from 19 different countries. In total, around 180 authors contributed into the conference. All papers are going to be reviewed from a scientific committee consisting of internationally acclaimed scholars. The six keynote speakers from Albania, Italy, and Egypt comprised internationally renowned academics and local policymakers. The conference was organized with the support of COST Action 19136 NET4Age-Friendly, the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of Polytechnic University of Tirana and other partners.

The 4-ICAUD tackled the most recent theme of the New Normality, which caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Global Event that affected the world in early 2020 has had some huge reflections in many of the design fields, forcing architects and engineers, urban planners, and designers to rethink many of the consolidate knowledge in the designing approaches. Some of those changes are temporary and destined to going-back in a short time; meanwhile others seem to become permanent and able to challenge our personal and social mindset, as designers as well as end-users. Those ongoing changes also stress the importance of a rising transdisciplinary interaction among diverse field of knowledge, having affected the whole people real-life realm at the global scale.

The 4-ICAUD 2021 initiated a deep “think-tank” moment on how we have been challenged and on what we are gaining in the switch between NEW & OLD NORMALITY POST 2020. Taking advantage from the time experienced and ripened in one year later than the beginning of the pandemic era, to draft what it will be the after-pandemic era in the fields of design, and not only in that.