Current Trends in Civil Engineering and Architecture
Scientific conference held in Kabul between March 28 and April 1, 2009
In the framework of the project ‘Euro-Asia Partnership for Development Human Resource
Capacity of Engineering Education in Afghanistan’ the first scientific conference
was organized in Kabul, Afghanistan, between March 28 and April 1, 2009. The conference
was focused on the field of Civil engineering and Architecture. It brought together
Afghan students, academicians and business representative from Afghanistan, Europe,
Asia and USA in order to exchange knowledge and know-how in academic curricula,
current trends and modern approaches. In total, 124 academicians, students and business
representatives participated on the conference and more than 100 students took part
in specialized seminars.
The conference was held at Kabul Polytechnic University. There were 25 lectures
presented, open discussion forum was organized in the framework of which the problems
of engineering education in Afghanistan and possibilities of cooperation were discussed
among academicians from Afghan, European, Asian and USA universities. Three special
seminars were also organized, one focused on Heat Transfer and Energy Analysis of
Buildings led by Juma Haydary from the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava
and the second one focused on Norms and Standards in Civil Engineering,
held by
Ivan Balaz and Jozef Dicky from Civil Engineering Faculty of the STU. Another seminar
– Current trends in interior design, given by Veronika Kotradyova from Faculty of
Architecture of STU, was held for Afghan students of Architecture.
Participants from abroad had also chance to visit the most interesting places of
Kabul on one day sightseeing tour: historical museum, Kabul archive, Babur gardens
or famous Chicken Street.
Social evening was organized for conference participants, where traditional Afghan
music was presented together with Afghan cuisine. During the evening, participants
had chance to discuss in more details conference topics and to exchange contacts
for future cooperation.
Main conference outputs:
- Increasing knowledge on new trends in civil engineering
and architecture among conference participants - academicians and students
- Presentation of examples of modern curricula and foreign education systems and their implementation
into Afghan education system
- Conference proceedings provided in hard copy and
electronic format for all participants and published at the project website
- Transfer of knowledge on modern conference organization methods to Afghan partners (development
of conference online system, interactive CD with contributions, etc.)
- Media output on the conference and project implementation
- Presentation of the Slovak Republic and other partner countries in Afghanistan
- Beginning of new cooperation between Afghan universities and Slovak University of Technology in the area of EUROCODES
- Starting new cooperation between KPU and STU in the field of Chemical technology