While climate change manifests on a global scale through rising temperatures, extreme weather events, sea level rise, heavy rainfall, flooding, heatwaves, and droughts, its effects are felt directly at the local level: urban areas are increasingly exposed to thermal stress. Impermeable surfaces and overheated building masses create urban heat islands that struggle to cool down, even at night. Cities—once symbols of protection, progress, and social interaction—are becoming the focal points of the climate crisis.
In the coming years, even European metropolises will reach temperatures that are barely tolerable for people, animals, vegetation, and infrastructure. This scenario threatens not only social cohesion and urban productivity but also the health and survival of city dwellers. Already today, urban populations face a growing risk of dehydration and cardiovascular diseases, and heat-related deaths are on the rise.
There is an urgent need for resilient, responsible, and integrated urban planning. Without effective countermeasures, some cities could become uninhabitable within a few decades.
Germany’s contribution to the 2025 Architecture Biennale takes this concrete threat as its starting point: the exhibition
STRESSTEST makes the future reality of urban climate both physically and psychologically tangible, demonstrating that architecture and landscape planning not only can—but must—play a key role in creating climate-adapted cities.
https://stresstest.world/
