The 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate Alejandro Aravena will next week join several other past winners of architecture’s most prestigious accolade to discuss the challenges facing the built environment.

Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Richard Meier are among the other big names who will participate in the discussion – called Pritzker Laureates' Conversation: Challenges Ahead for the Built Environment – at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 5 April.

Zaha Hadid was due to speak at the event, but sadly passed away on Thursday (31 March).

Glenn Murcutt, Wang Shu, Thom Mayne and Christian de Portzamparc will round up the impressive panel, and the discussion will be opened by Paloma Durán, the director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fund. The event will take place at 6.30pm Eastern Time (ET) and will be webcast on Webtv.un.org.

Aravena is well-known for his social and humanitarian approach to design, and is curating this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale to focus on how architects and developers around the world can overcome complex issues restricting their work.

When launching the Venice event in February, he said: “Several battles need to be won and several frontiers need to be expanded in order to improve the quality of the built environment and consequently people’s quality of life.”

The Chilean architect will be awarded the 2016 Pritzker Prize at a ceremony at the UN on 4 April at approximately 7:30pm ET.

On 5 April, before the panel discussion, Aravena will take part in a press conference with Durán and executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Martha Thorne. The trio will discuss architecture, the importance of public spaces and how they are designed, social housing and the UN’s sustainable development goals. That event will also be streamed live online.

The Pritzker Architecture Prize was founded in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife Cindy Pritzker. Its purpose is to honour annually a living architect “who has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.”