AIA '17 CONFERENCE ON ARCHITECTURE
A'17 CONFERENCE ON ARCHITECTURE SESSION HIGHLIGHT
GLOBAL ARCHITECTS BY YU-NGOK LO
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s a small firm practitioner who has worked on projects overseas, the answer to the question “Why would architects want to practice internationally?” is obvious. However, I wanted to hear from experts in the profession who have attributed their career success to international practice. The A’17 Conference on Architecture in Orlando provided this insight. Two sessions that particularly caught my eye were TH311 – Introducing the Global Practice Primer and FR 416 – International Practice: A Primer for Emerging Professionals. The FR416 session held my interest as it was especially relevant to emerging professionals. Moderated by Greg Yager, Senior Vice President of Callison RTKL, the session speakers were Wyatt Frantom, AIA, senior associate and senior designer at Gensler Los Angeles; Juan Betancur, AIA, director of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture; and Jenni Katajamaki, AIA, an associate at Flansburgh Architects. The experiences and projects the speakers brought to the session were very diverse. Frantom's work with HOK and Gensler and Betancur’s work with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture are city landmarks, generally larger in scale, while
Katajamaki’s work with Flansburgh focuses on culture and contextoriented projects. Although these projects vary in scale and location, they all share similar challenges, such as cultural differences, language and time differences from office to project site. The session started off with questioning why U.S. architects would want to venture into overseas markets. Frantom answered this question, in part, by modifying Louis Sullivan’s well-known idiom to suggest that “form (also) follows finance,” noting the impacts that meta-trends -- such as globalization, densification, and urbanization -- have on global development patterns. This statement seems to resonate with many architects who survived the Great Recession. Globalization and the economic power shift are a few factors that have created an increased demand for architectural services overseas. The question of how was answered by the Global Practice Primer session. I was not familiar with this resource before I attended the session. Moderated by the 2017 chairman of the AIA International Practice Committee, James B. Atkins, FAIA, FKIA, the speakers
ABOVE: KORAMANGALA tech innovation campus - Courtesy Gensler
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CONNECTION
THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM
OPPOSITE ABOVE: large scale mix-use projects - Courtesy Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture OPPOSITE BOTTOM: project delivery matrix - Courtesy Mark Careaga