PLEA Association is an organization engaged in a worldwide discourse on sustainable architecture and urban design through annual international conferences, workshops and publications. It has created a community of several thousand professionals, academics and students from over 40 countries. Participation in PLEA activities is open to all whose work deals with architecture and the built environment, who share our objectives and who attend PLEA events. 

PLEA stands for “Passive and Low Energy Architecture”, a commitment to the development, documentation and diffusion of the principles of bioclimatic design and the application of natural and innovative techniques for sustainable architecture and urban design. 

PLEA serves as an open, international, interdisciplinary forum to promote high quality research, practice and education in environmentally sustainable design.

PLEA is an autonomous, non-profit association of individuals sharing the art, science, planning and design of the built environment.

PLEA pursues its objectives through international conferences and workshops; expert group meetings and consultancies; scientific and technical publications; and architectural competitions and exhibitions.

Since 1982 PLEA has been organizing highly ranked conferences that attract both academia and practicing architects. Past Conferences have taken place in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia.   

After almost a decade the PLEA conference is coming back to South America, Santiago (Chile),  to be organized by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC). Inevitably, the theme of PLEA 2022 is inspired by the current pandemic which has put the whole world on alert and makes us rethink our built environment in terms of health and safety. Whereas due to its current social unrest and significant social divide Santiago and South America in general provides a great ground to talk about inequalities and revisit social movements, that spanned around the globe from Lebanon, France to Chile and other countries just before the pandemic hit.

The aim of the PLEA 2022 is to question the whole idea of a city, the way we inhabit and use them generating the definitive inflection point that a sustainable city requires.