YAF CONNECTION 15.03

CONNECTION THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF

THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

This issue focuses on the humanitarian work done by architects we also take a look at their firm structure and business models. We also report on topics such as building resiliency and disaster readiness

Q3- 2017

VOL 15 ISSUE 03

CONNECTION

THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

CONNECTION EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Editor-In-Chief Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA Senior Editor Beth Mosenthal, AIA Senior Editor Ian Merker, AIA Senior Editor, International Correspondent Vikki Lew, AIA Senior Graphic Editor Nicholas Banks, AIA Editor Phillip Anzalone, AIA Contributing Journalist Gabriela Baierle-Atwood, AIA Contributing Journalist Kate Thuesen, AIA

2017 YAF ADVISORY COMMITTEE Chair Evelyn Lee, AIA Vice Chair Lawrence Fabbronni, AIA Past Chair Joshua Flowers, AIA Advocacy Director Stephen Parker, AIA Communications Director Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA Community Director Shelby Morris, AIA Knowledge Director Ryan McEnroe, AIA Public Relations Director Lora Teagarden, AIA

AIA National Strategic Council Representative College of Fellows Representative AIA Staff Liaison

Jack Morgan, AIA Peter Kuttner, FAIA Milan Jordan, Assoc. AIA

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 1735 New York Ave, NW Washington, DC 20006-5292

P 800-AIA-3837

www.aia.org

CONNECTION is a the official quarterly publication of the Young Architects Forum of the AIA. This publication is created through the volunteer efforts of dedicated Young Architect Forum members.

Copyright 2017 by The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.

Views expressed in this publication are solely those of the authors and not those of the American Institute of Architects. Copyright © of individual articles belongs to the Author. All image permissions are obtained by or copyright of the Author.

AIA

ON THE COVER: Downtown Houston during Hurricane Harvey PRESIDENT’S NOTE

by Christof Spieler.

Thomas Vonier, FAIA See more in this issue's CHAIR’S MESSAGE feature topic of disaster Evelyn Lee, AIA relief starting on page 12

STRATEGIC COUNCIL MESSAGE

Jack Morgan, AIA and Jason Winters, AIA

EDITOR’S NOTE

Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA

YOUNG ARCHITECTS AWARD SPOTLIGHT

Beth Mosenthal, AIA

DISASTER RELIEF IMAGES FROM YAF MEMBERS OF RECIPIENT NATURAL DISASTERS WHY THE AIA PARTICIPATES IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

Michael Lingerfelt, FAIA

HELPING THE MINORITY COMMUNITIES IN HOUSTON

An Interview with Wardell Ross Jr., AIA

IN A CRSIS, WE ARE CITIZENS FIRST, ARCHITECTS SECOND

Sarah Killingsworth, Assoc. AIA

SAFETY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

Janis Brackett, AIA

THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IRMA AND MARIA An Interview with Vicki Long, Hon. AIA

RE-THINKING REFUGEE COMMUNITIES Eliza Montgomery

AIA DISASTER ASSISTANCE HANDBOOK An interview with Tom Hurd, AIA

PRO BONO / NON-PROFIT WORK DLR GROUP

An interview with DLR Group

JOURNEYMAN INTERNATIONAL An interview with Carly Althoff

ARCHITECTURE FOR CHILDREN An interview with Vicky Chan, AIA

PRO-BONO PROJECTS AT PAYETTE Karen Robichaud

IN REMEMBRANCE OF SHO-PING CHIN, FAIA Karen Robichaud

SERVICE THROUGH PRACTICE

An interview with Kyle Rendall, AIA

A JOURNEY TO BOGATA Carla Amaya

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY PUBLIC INTEREST ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM

An interview with Georgia Bizios, FAIA

SOWING THE SEEDS FOR SUCCESS, WORKING FROM THE HEART

Illya Azaroff, AIA

HUMANITARIAN WORK AND COMMUNITY PLANNING DIEBEDO FRANCIS KERE- THE GANDO PROJECT

Vikki Lew, AIA

COMMUNITY DESIGN IN PRACTICE

Stephen Parker, AIA

HUMANITARIAN DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

Vikki Lew, AIA

RESILIENCE THE CASE FOR OTHERS IN ARCHITECTURE Alicia Ajayi

ARCHITECTURE REQUIRES A RESILENT FUTURE

Jon Penndorf, FAIA

BUILDING HOLISTIC RESILIENCE AFTER DISASTER ORLI+

#YAFchat

Lora Teagarden, AIA

#YAspotlight EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHT Kathleen Gordon, Assoc. AIA

05 06 07 08 10 12 14 18 20 24 28 30 34 36 42 46 50 54 56 58 60 64 66 72 76 78 80 84

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VOL 15 ISSUE 03

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTING EDITORS YU-NGOK LO, AIA

is the principal of YNL Architects, Inc. He is the Communication Director of the Young Architects Forum National Advisory Committee of the AIA and the Editor-In-Chief of the YAF official publication CONNECTION. Lo is a recipient of the 2016 AIA Young Architects Award.

BETH MOSENTHAL, AIA

has worked as an architect in Shanghai, New York, Chicago, and currently in Denver with Anderson Mason Dale Architects.

She serves as a Senior Editor of YAF CONNECTION, Senior Editor/Writer for the AIA Colorado Emerging Professionals Blog, and as a columnist for the Colorado Real Estate Journal’s Building Dialogue Magazine.

PHILLIP ANZALONE, AIA

is a Partner of the Brooklyn based firm Atelier Architecture 64, and a Professor of Architectural Technology at the New York City College of Technology. Anzalone served as the New York Regional Director of the Young Architects Forum for 2015 and 2016. His prior appointments include directing the building science and technology sequence at Columbia University’s GSAPP, facade consultant at R.A. Heintges and Associates and architectural designer at Greg Lynn Form.

VIKKI LEW, AIA

began her architectural career in San Francisco and started practicing internationally in 2006. Her diverse portfolio includes healthcare, university, residential, financial institute, retail, mixed-use, super-highrise, and master planning. She is a Board member of AIA Hong Kong.

IAN MERKER, AIA

is an architect at Rainforth Grau Architects in Sacramento, CA, specializing in the education sector. He is Film Curator for AIA Central Valley and a YAF Regional Director.

NICHOLAS BANKS, AIA

is an architect for the education studio of Corgan in Houston, TX. He is the chair of the Intern and Associate network for AIA Houston, where he encourages local associates along the path to licensure. Banks has been a contributor to YAF CONNECTION for over three years

Kate Thuesen, AIA

is a multi-talented architect with vast experience in both the K-12 and Higher Education industries. In addition to her primary role as a project architect at DLR Group, Thuesen takes on a variety of other tasks including business development and recruitment, making her a knowledgeable and reliable resource within the company. She is passionate about cultivating meaningful, long-lasting relationships, as well as creating unique and innovative design solutions for her clients.

GABRIELA BAIERLE ATWOOD, AIA

is an architect with Arrowstreet in Boston, MA. She is currently serving as Architect Licensing Advisor for both the AIA Massachusetts and NCARB. Atwood continues her involvement by being a member of the Boston Society of Architects and their Emerging Professionals Network, BosNOMA and MakeTANK committees.

AIA PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

HUMANITY BECKONS. ARCHITECTS RESPOND

D

evastating disasters continue to try communities all over the world. Major hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, and wildfires will affect the lives of millions of people for years to come.

Design will be at the forefront of these efforts, as reflected in such FEMA-backed courses as Resilient Building Design for Coastal Communities. Architects are gaining new knowledge in resilient planning and design strategies for disaster-prone sites.

Our planet’s unabated urbanization has already overburdened us with problems—deadly levels of pollution, near-constant congestion, rising frustration, spiraling living costs, and persistent poverty and insecurity. Now, calamities are piling on more needs that must be met.

Architects are equipped with skills and abilities that are directly applicable on the ground, in tangible and action-oriented ways.

This wonderful aspect of our profession has come to the fore, mirroring the pace and scale of human needs. The aftermath of recent floods and earthquakes left me impressed and heartened by our profession’s desire – and its ability – to help.

Need is a pervasive and even overwhelming force in the world today, with huge populations being displaced not only by disaster, but also by conflict. Many people in positions of relative good fortune want to help, and architects are no exception. As president of the American Institute of Architects, I have seen our profession doing its very best. Many members have stepped forward to volunteer, and our organization is rallying to help people in distress.

When the sense of urgency recedes, our help will still be needed – perhaps more than ever – as communities grapple with basic questions about where and how to build for a more secure future.■

In the immediate aftermath of disasters in Texas, Florida, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, AIA members are carrying out building-condition assessments. The AIA offers a direct outlet for such voluntary aid through its Safety Assessment Program, which trains architects to help civil authorities evaluate post-earthquake and post-flood damage.

Architects are also deeply involved in finding ways to meet the persistent (and growing) challenges of homelessness and lack of affordable housing. Dozens of communities are making advances against these problems, aided by the pro bono work of architects.

Some of these stories have been documented on film, and more of them will be.

Architects can render assistance that goes well beyond basic humanitarian aid. Rising sea levels and new patterns of extreme weather suggest that many communities will need to implement wholesale reforms in planning and design. To cope with new realities, we will need to re-examine zoning policies, development values, building codes, and construction practices.

Thomas Vonier, FAIA is an architect working from bases in Paris and Washington DC. He is the 2017 president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was elected in September to serve for three years as president of the International Union of Architects (UIA).

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CHAIR'S MESSAGE

WE SHOULD ALL DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

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just celebrated the second birthday of my first child and am on maternity leave for my little girl, born the end of July. Being at home has left me a lot of time to contemplate the current state of our country and what the future holds for our children. How can I make this world a better place? And, on a greater scale, how can we contribute as a profession? How can we all Design with Conscience?

• To provide creative opportunities that allow a firm to flex its imaginative abilities and provide leadership opportunities to its younger staff members.

Going through my B.Arch program in the late 90s and early 2000s, Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio seemed to be the epitome of a socially conscious architectural practice. However, time has proved that there are plenty of examples of firms designing with conscience in their communities and beyond. Projects range in scale from parklets taking over city parking spaces to entire planned neighborhoods.

• To build local engagement and strategic partnerships by collaborating with entities that a firm may not typically work for or with.

At the time this piece was written, there were 172 completed pro bono projects on the 1+ website, the world’s largest pro bono design marketplace, and over 1,500 designers and firms committed to donating their time to the public good. John Cary’s new book, “Design for Good,” was just released this week and showcases “character-driven, real-world stories about the power of designs that dignify.” It’s a great follow-up to his first editorial book, “The Power of Pro Bono,” which features “40 Stories about Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients.”

Socially conscious projects are working their way into the practice daily, whether driven by a firm’s principals or future leaders. Latent Design and Inscape Publico have social responsibility ingrained into the core of their practices. They are exemplary precedents that have strategically integrated social-impact design, creating incredible value for their clients while providing for their employees.

• To engage all the staff, including non-design employees, adding to the firm’s recruitment and retention, especially in a competitive marketplace.

• To increase community outreach by attracting press and media outlets that may not otherwise showcase the firm’s work.

• To improve personal satisfaction within the firm by allowing aspiring and experienced architects to use their skill sets for making measurable impressions in people’s lives.

I hope that this issue of Connection inspires you and your firms to think of different ways to inspire through social-impact design.

Early in my career, I was given the opportunity to be the project manager of a team that converted an old strip mall into an Easter Seals Early Child Development Center. To date, it remains one of my most memorable projects.

We should all design with a conscience. What is your contribution going to be? ■

In 2007, as the first program manager for the 1+ program of Public Architecture, I often talked about five reasons why firms should strategically implement a pro bono program:

Evelyn M. Lee, AIA leads Workplace Strategy for Savills Studley's West Coast offices. She combines her business and architecture background to seamlessly integrate workplace experience with organizational culture and operational strategy. Lee is the 2017 Chair of the Young Architects Forum National Advisory Committee of the AIA.

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THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

STRATEGIC COUNCIL'S MESSAGE

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

STRATEGIC COUNCIL NEWS

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he recent catastrophic weather and earthquakes have brought the topics of pro bono and humanitarian work into the collective conscience of architects. Several members of the Strategic Council undertake such work as a normal part of our practices. Therefore, this council update focuses on the topics through two lenses. The first is an example of how one councilor incorporates pro bono work into his firm. The second illuminates a few of the lessons learned from Texas and Miami as architects help recover and restore in their communities.

After any wide-scale natural disaster, the calls for pro bono and humanitarian services greatly increase. However, before helping others, many firms in affected areas have to first take care of their staff and clients. Many carry business-interruption insurance to cover the loss of income that firms suffer after a disaster. However, this does not address the personal difficulties that employees face.

After the recent hurricanes, Jaime Sobrino, AIA Florida/Caribbean regional representative, and Donna Kacmar, FAIA Texas regional representative, shared insights on storm-proofing your business.

Tim Hawk, FAIA Ohio Valley Strategic Council representative, is a principal at WSA Studio in Columbus, Ohio. “At WSA Studio, our values system drives a connection to the community that we help to shape through our architecture,” Tim said. “We want to be a part of making Columbus better in as many ways to demonstrate our commitment to design excellence.” They have been taking on pro bono work in their community since 2005 and have assisted many organizations, such as the Community Shelter Board, the Ohio Bar Association, and a number of United Church of Christ congregations across the state. “In 2014, we embarked on a mission to expand our impact with charities and initiated an annual Cornhole Tournament to raise funds to help implement our pro bono projects at charity sites,” Tim said. “In the past four years, we have raised nearly $10,000 for the I Believe Foundation, a leadership camp for Appalachian youth and assisted with the design of their administrative offices. This year, our Cornhole Tournament raised nearly $4,000 towards the construction of the Chapel Hill Tree House, a summer destination for families coping with childhood cancer.”

Firms may wish to develop strategies around this question: “How do we meet our current client needs when no one can get to the office for a week or more?” Working from home is often not an adequate answer because of large-scale disruptions to power grids and cell networks during major disasters.

Pro bono work not only helps those in the community, but it also benefits the employees. They participate in these projects as part of their normal work environment, Tim said. In addition, such projects provide opportunities for employee engagement with industry partners and expose the employees to organizations with which they might not have otherwise worked. Tim stresses that outreach through pro bono work helps clients better understand WSA Studio’s mission and enriches the firm’s relationships.

If your state does not have “Good Samaritan” legislation in place, work with your legislature to enact it. When widespread disasters happen, professionals from neighboring states are often needed to assist with the assessment process. Without some provision of “Good Samaritan” protection, those professionals will not be able to help.

Jaime and Donna both noted the need for a database that could rapidly identify members in an affected area who could use assistance from others. The ability to connect members in need with those who can help would be a significant benefit. Whether it’s to sling a tarp over a hole in the roof, clean up a site, or bring over lunch, AIA members can help others stabilize their lives more quickly, allowing them to assist someone else in need.

Ultimately, the most important thing is to be prepared to act when needed. Whether that means getting trained in the Safety Assessment Program or just having a well-developed businesscontinuity plan, the more quickly you can put your business back on track, the easier it will be for you to assist in the pro bono opportunities in your community. ■

Jason C. Winters, AIA

Jack Morgan, AIA

is a founding principal of the architectural design firm Kezlo Group. His professional work has been primarily focused on design in the specialty of healthcare architecture. Winters was the president of AIA Maryland in 2014, and is currently serving as the Mid-Atlantic Region Representative to the AIA National Strategic Council.

is the Director of Architecture and an Associate for FSB in Oklahoma City, OK. He served on the Board of Directors of his local chapter, AIA Central Oklahoma Chapter and was the Chapter President in 2014.

Morgan is currently serving on the state chapter’s Board of Directors, AIA Oklahoma as the Treasurer. He is also the YAF representative to the Strategic Council.

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EDITOR'S MESSAGE

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ARCHITECTURE

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elcome to our Q3 Connection! We will be focusing on topics related to pro bono design and humanitarian work in this issue.

First, I would like to offer my condolences to all the victims who suffered dramatically during recent hurricanes. It is time for every one of us to step up and help the victims in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Mexico in any way we can. The release date of Q3 was delayed to allow our team more time to report on the recovery efforts led by AIA members dealing with the aftermath of these disasters. That allowed us to speak with experts in those areas and report these stories to our readers. Our editorial team also reached out to a few architects and emerging professionals who participated in the disaster recoveries after Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. However, many people declined our interview requests. Some of them lost their homes and even loved ones, and it was too painful for them to talk about the devastation they went through. For those who were willing to share their stories, it was encouraging for me to hear about their experiences, and I truly admire their dedication in helping their fellow citizens.

This issue may be focused on content related to the recent disasters, but in addition to volunteering on that front, I would like to urge our readers to offer humanitarian help in other communities.

Many are underserved in the U.S. and around the world, and they are crying for help. Architects can influence kids’ lives simply by introducing them to the profession at an early age, as Vicky Chan’s Architecture for Children program is doing in his community. Start by contacting your local chapter; it is time for us to think about how we can contribute to a community’s future and what it means to become a civic leader.

Lastly, I would like to give special thanks to all of this issue’s contributors. Some were in Texas leading the recovery effort when we conducted interviews with them. I personally thank them for spending their valuable time and sharing their stories with us. I think it is important for Connection to retell these stories and spark the conversation on climate change once again. I would also like to thank the editorial team and all of the Young Architect Regional Directors who contributed their time and effort. This issue wouldn’t have been possible without their help. ■

Unfortunately, extreme weather is not only affecting the U.S. In August, Typhoon Hato devastated my hometown, Macau, on the other side of the world, a former Portuguese colony about 40 miles west of Hong Kong. Massive flooding affected pretty much the entire city and interrupted electrical and water services for many days, not to mention the city’s $1.42 billion economic loss. My parents’ home was among those heavily affected. All the exterior windows were damaged, and they had to take shelter at their neighbor’s home.

There is consensus among scientists that rising sea levels made these super storms far more destructive. According to National Public Radio and The New York Times, even the government agrees that Americans are seeing more heat waves and rainfall as a result of climate change, per the U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Draft Report. I urge those of you who are still in denial about climate change to look at all the scientific evidence. It is our responsibility, as architects and global citizens, to design responsibly and achieve true resiliency in our cities. We cannot further delay this conversation and have our children pay for our generation’s inaction. I would also recommend that our readers take a look at the AIA’s Disaster Assistance Handbook. It is a comprehensive guide, with case studies written by many experts in the field, and it offers insights on disaster relief and preparedness.

Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA is the principal of YNL Architects, Inc. He is the Communication Director of the Young Architects Forum National Advisory Committee of the AIA and the EditorIn-Chief of the YAF official publication CONNECTION. Lo is a recipient of the 2016 AIA Young Architects Award.

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE CALL We are looking for team members to join the editorial committee.

While we welcome skill sets of all stripes, our current need is a copy editor. The position description is as follows: Copy Editor: Check over writers' / contributors' final drafts to ensure they're free of errors and make sure the writing is easy to read and fits the publication's editorial style. Must be able to work in a remote setting with the ability to balance publication deadlines with employment. Ability to attend a quarterly kick-off conference call with the potential for intermediate update calls.

Proficiency in Microsoft Word required. Please provide a sample page or link of prior work.

YAF RESOURCE GUIDE AIA’s Young Architects Forum YAF's official website YAF KnowledgeNet A knowledge resource for awards, announcements, podcasts, blogs, YAF Connection, and other valuable YAF legacy content ... this resource has it all!

AIA College of Fellows Check out the College of Fellows's reciprocal newsletter to find out more about what's going on.

This position has immediate availability with a commitment of one year and all issues of YAF CONNECTION in 2017. Position will be reevaluated at year's end based on need and performance.

If interested, please contact the YAF Communications Director (YAF CONNECTION Editor-in-Chief/Creative Director), Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA at yungoklo@hotmail.com for more information

Know Someone Who’s Not Getting YAF Connection?

Don’t let them be out of the loop any longer. It’s easy for AIA members to sign up. Update your AIA member profile and add the Young Architects Forum under “Your Knowledge Communities.”

• Sign in to your AIA account • Click on the blue “Add a Knowledge Community” button • Select Young Architects Forum from the drop down and SAVE! Call for News, Reviews, Events Do you have newsworthy content that you’d like to share with our readers? Contact the editor, Yu-Ngok Lo, on Twitter @yungoklo.

Call for CONNECTION Articles, Projects, Photography Would you like to submit content for inclusion in an upcoming issue? Contact the editor, Yu-Ngok Lo, at yungoklo@hotmail.com

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2017 AIA YOUNG ARCHITECTS AWARD WINNER PROFILE AN INTERVIEW WITH LORA TEAGARDEN, AIA

BY BETH R. MOSENTHAL

Lora Teagarden, AIA is an Project Architect at RATIO Architects. She is also the owner of L² Design, LLC. Teagarden is the author of ARE Sketches, a very popular visual study guide for ARE candidates. She is currently the Public Relations Director of the AIA YAF Advisory Committee and is elected to be the Vice Chair for 2018. Teagarden is a winner of the 2017 AIA National Young Architects Award.

In March 2017, the AIA announced the 14 recipients of its annual Young Architects Awards. The winners met the criteria of being “practicing architects licensed for no more than 10 years and who have made significant strides in the profession, both in terms of leadership and contributions.”

Lora Teagarden, a name familiar to many of our CONNECTION readers because of her role as YAF Chat moderator, was one of the recipients. Lora is the public relations director of the YAF Advisory Committee and will be vice chair in 2018. Congratulations to Lora on her achievements!

Beth R. Mosenthal (BRM): Tell me about your academic and professional background and how it led you to where you are now professionally.

Lora Teagarden (LT): I grew up in Speedway, Ind. – home of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I jokingly attribute some of my entrepreneurial spirit to this race because I learned quickly that I could sell soda and charge people to park in our yard. My high school thankfully had a drafting class, and I took both levels that were offered and then asked for the teacher to make further levels so that I could continue my junior and senior years. I got my undergrad – and then master’s – at Ball State University. I was originally accepted to a five-year B.Arch, but the university changed it to a 4+2 my sophomore year. It’s all part of the path of overcoming obstacles. I moved around the States after grad school with my now ex-husband, as he was a naval officer. We were in the throes of the recession, and our yearly moves made me literally the least hirable person: a military spouse, constantly moving, looking to work in architecture, during the recession. This was when I decided to start L² because I decided if my circumstances wouldn’t let me keep a steady job, I would make one for myself. During our divorce, I made my way back to Indianapolis simply for the fact that I had the best architecture network and contacts there to start the next chapter of my journey. I worked for two firms and the Department of Homeland Security doing building-code plan review before I landed as a project architect with RATIO Architects, which is where I am now.

BRM: How did you first become involved in the AIA? LT: I started getting involved in the AIA about a year after I moved back to Indianapolis. I was still trying to find a good work fit and knew the network aspect that AIA could provide would be helpful.

RIGHT: YOUNG ARCHITECTS AWARD CELEBRATION - Lora with her sister and father at the 2017 AIA Conference on Architecture

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I also wanted to start serving my community and profession more, so I quickly started serving in chair and board capacities – filling whatever need they had.

BRM: You’ve fulfilled many different types of leadership roles, ranging from social media marketing within your firm and the AIA to contributing to large-scale design projects. Which role as a young leader has been the most fulfilling thus far?

JP: From the aspect of working within a firm, the media aspect is something I’ve taught myself to do over the years. I think it’s important that architects tell the story of a project and the value we bring to a project – it’s not something we currently do well. My most rewarding experience is seeing and hearing the happiness of a client when they begin to use the new or renovated space I’ve designed for them. When they start noticing the big and small moves that solve problems for them that they weren’t even aware of, I know I’ve done my job well. I see this happen on the large-scale projects by way of professors and students who use the spaces, the small-scale residential projects I do as the owner begins to live their life and make new memories in their home, and even the #AREsketches as people reach out to tell me they’ve passed an exam and my study material made the difference.

BRM: Once identified as a leader in various organizations, it is often easy to become overextended in terms of commitments or responsibilities. How do you balance your professional and extracurricular pursuits?

LT: Balance? What’s that?

To be honest, this is something I struggle with. I’ve written about it on the L² blog before, and I’m constantly trying to reassess my priorities. My desire to help people and fix things can very quickly lead me to take on too much. And my passion for the profession makes me happily spend time doing things I care about that others might label as “work.” At the end of the day, if I’m happy with what

I’m doing, if I’ve been able to play with my dogs and read a book, if I still have time to travel ... then I consider that “balance.” It’s constantly changing, and I know the formula will look different six months or three years from now, but if I’m happy ... then that’s the balance I need.

BRM: What role has mentorship played in your current role as a successful architect and young leader in the architecture community?

LT: Mentorship is everything. I’ve written a three-part series about this as well. I can directly link some of my most important jobs, projects, and service opportunities to mentorship in and out of the AIA. It’s also important to realize that mentorship is a two-way street, and it doesn’t have to be formal. It’s simply finding someone who’s good at something you want to learn ... and learning from them. And then sharing your knowledge with others in the same way.

BRM: You were one of the presenters for the 2+2 program at A’17.

Can you please tell us about this responsibility/experience?

JP: Let me start off by saying I dislike talking in front of large groups, but I’m getting better at it. I make myself do it because I understand that sharing what I’ve learned along the way is more important than my own fear. I approached my portion of the 2+2 presentation in that same way and talked mainly about my path as a young architect.

Others chose to talk more about the projects they’ve done, but so much of my lessons and experiences have been one of service to my peers and the AIA, so I felt it was important to talk about how

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

that can impact your journey and that no journey is the same.

My dad and sister also flew in to hear my talk and celebrate with me. It was wonderful to have them there and talk about their impact on my journey. We also made some time to play hooky and go to Harry Potter World!

BRM: What advice would you give to a young architect or graduate who aspires to become a Young Architects Award winner?

LT: Well, number one: It’s not about the award. If you’re submitting only for that reason, you’re submitting for the wrong reasons. The award is an acknowledgement of service to the profession and work in your career. That’s what it all comes down to – how are you doing your part to make the world better?

Also, don’t be afraid to submit. I found out about two weeks before I submitted that I was passed over for the Indiana version of the Young Architects Award. I could have let that disappointment prevent me from submitting ... and I almost let it do so ... but I decided to submit anyway because I believed in the value of the work I was doing and the people I was helping.

It’s also important to realize – or this is my take at least – that this acknowledgement comes with continued responsibility. I don’t get to rest on my laurels after receiving the Young Architects Award. I have to work harder now to keep earning that respect. Receiving this award isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of the next chapter. ■

ABOVE: ARE SKETCHES- a flipbook of cool sketches and visual study guide to help ARE candidates preparing their exams.

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IMAGES OF RECENT NATURAL DISASTERS HURRICANE HARVEY - HOUSTON

DOWNTOWN HOUSTON AT ALLENS LANDING

IMAGE BY CHRISTOF SPIELER

STANDING OVER BUFFALO BAYOU - DAY 1

IMAGE BY NICHOLAS BANKS

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STANDING OVER BUFFALO BAYOU - DAY 2

IMAGE BY NICHOLAS BANKS

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

ABANDONDING ON THE BACK OF A TRUCK

IMAGE BY JAKE PRICE

FLOODING IN NEIGHBORHOODS

IMAGE BY JAKE PRICE

TYPHOON HATO - MACAU CANOEING DOWN THE ROAD

IMAGE BY JAKE PRICE

FLOODING THROUGHTOUT THE CITY

IMAGE BY SUNNY LOUIE

SIGNIFICANT WIND DAMAGE IMAGE BY SUNNY LOUIE

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FEATURE | DISATER RELIEF

WHY THE AIA PARTICIPATES IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

BY MICHAEL LINGERFELT

Michael Lingerfelt, FAIA is a high-energy executive with more than 37 years experience in design and project delivery. He has served on the American Institute of Architects Disaster Assistance Committee since 2007 (was the chair and currently an advisor), a speaker at numerous conferences and has been a California Emergency Management Agency Safety Assessment Program (SAP) Trainer since 2008.

To date, Lingerfelt has trained over 1,800 architects, engineers, building officials and inspectors. He has completed the Emergency Management Institute's Professional Series (2009) and HURRIPLAN Resilient Building Design for Coastal Communities (2013).

Lingerfelt has provided safety assessment evaluations for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, LA (2004), Northridge, CA Earthquake (1994), Birmingham, AL (2011), fire and flood assessments in California and for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria (2017).

Lingerfelt was elevated into the prestigious American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2012 for his efforts advocating that architects should serve the public surrounding a disaster.

Years ago, the AIA Disaster Committee tried to answer that question, and it was found that nationwide, one minor disaster occurs each week, and at least 10 major disasters happen each year.

In fact, nearly 80 percent of Americans have been hit by an extreme weather disaster since 2007, according to a report released by the Environment America Research and Policy Center. The report, based on disaster-declaration data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, found that 243 million Americans have lived in a county hit by at least one federally declared weather-related disaster in that time. The breadth and impact of these disasters, which include drought, tropical cyclones, flooding, tornadoes, wildfires, and snow and ice storms, have been significant.

Historically, there is a plethora of volunteers willing to respond but no established, organized way to deploy them. Volunteer structural engineers and others are often called to respond to disasters, but to speed recovery, they should be reserved for detailed assessments.

An architect, as an individual responder, is uniquely qualified to evaluate the safety of a site and structure. Architects are natural problem solvers and planners, ideally suited for the complex situations brought on by a disaster. Because of the overwhelming demand for responders in some emergencies, there is a deficit from the local jurisdiction who can perform rapid building-damage assessments for safety.

Volunteer architects respond to calls from jurisdictions and public agencies. However, they are often precluded from participating in disaster response when they have not already established a connection with a jurisdiction’s network. Establishing a coordinated network for response and communications before a disaster is critical. Established state coordinators become familiar with local resources supporting disaster-response efforts and have local knowledge pertaining to the disaster.

Advanced building-assessment training allows for immediate deployment of volunteer architects and saves valuable response time. This is why we scoured the country for the best program to emulate and found the California Office of Emergency Services’ Safety Assessment Program (SAP) to be the best and most respected, with a history of successful deployments.

Disaster training establishes the architect as a leader in emergency response with his/her family, place of business, neighborhood, and other states. The architecture license requires a commitment to the health, safety, and welfare of the community. It is our civic duty to contribute our unique skills to this promise. Awareness of the risk makes us responsible for communicating the message and responding with our capabilities. States with less ongoing risk may be forced to use outside assistance in lieu of a localized training and coordination effort. Implementing a response plan helps

OPPOSITE: DISASTER RELIEF FLYER - Courtesy AIA Alabama

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to facilitate the quick renewal of operation for architecture firms/AIA components following a disaster. It is also important to understand and facilitate methodologies for permitting and streamlining reconstruction projects essential to recovery. Learned mitigation techniques are a unique asset to clients in both everyday design and in reconstruction. In fact, the committee has developed The Disaster Assistance Handbook to assist architects with rebuilding stronger and more resilient. It can be used as a “go-to resource for architects, built-environment professionals, municipal government officials, and emergency managers involved in disaster mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery.” It is a step-by-step guide for maximizing architects’ unique skills in addressing each phase of the disaster cycle. There is also the potential for future business professionals who are enabled, through pre-existing relationships, to create a more resilient community in the face of these disasters.

method to insert our skills into the response system as indicated above so we are an asset and not a liability. These elements are:

But before we go in to help, there has to be a system in place that protects the architect from liability, danger, and harm, as well as a

2. Clarity on Workers’ Compensation – If we are injured, can

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1. Liability Coverage – Samaritan laws basically state that if we are volunteering our time and talents, we are protected from being sued. All states provide liability protection to doctors and other volunteers in emergency situations.

This law would only expand that protection to architects and other licensed design professionals. As civic-minded professionals with wide-ranging knowledge of the built environment and established relationships with local building officials, architects are a valuable resource. After the Alabama tornadoes in 2011, over 150 professionals assessed 5,000+ buildings and volunteered 1,200 hours, resulting in taxpayer savings of $300,000.

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..243 million Americans - nearly four out of five - have lived in a county that has been hit by at least one federally declared weather-related disaster since 2007.

we get medical attention?

3. Standard of Training – Will the jurisdiction accept our qualifications and training? The SAP has been taught in many locations throughout the country. Personally, with last Tuesday’s SAP class in Miami, I have taught 1,809 folks, with 1,247 in the southeastern United States, including 630 in the Florida/Caribbean region. In addition, I have trained instructors who have conducted training sessions in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Currently, only California has a program that meets these requirements.

AIA Chief Executive Officer Robert Ivy, FAIA, said that “as the frequency, severity, and costs of natural and man-made hazards continue to impact the built environment, the unique skill sets that architects bring to all phases of emergency management are more critical than ever.” It is time for the visionary, creative, knowledgeable, innovative architecture profession to answer the call and help our communities survive and thrive in the face of these challenges. ■

4. Activation of Network – How do we plug into the existing system?

5. Portability of Licensure – Can we help in other states?

Believe it or not, we have been told that if deployed, we would be prosecuted for practicing architecture without a license.

OPPOSITE LEFT: SAFETY ASSESSMENT TRAINING IN SESSION Courtesy Michael Lingerfelt OPPOSITE RIGHT: ARCHITECTS IN ACTION - Disaster Assistance Team - Courtesy Michael Lingerfelt UPPER LEFT AND RIGHT: ASSESSING BUILDING SAFETY Courtesy Michael Lingerfelt

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HELPING THE MINORITY COMMUNITIES IN HOUSTON AN INTERVIEW WITH WARDELL ROSS JR.

BY YU-NGOK LO

Wardell Ross Jr, AIA is a licensed architect with over 18 years of experience working in Ohio and Texas.

Architecture is his profession, but more so a tool connecting him to his passion of supporting under resourced organizations, communities, and individuals. Ross holds a Bachelors of Architecture and a Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture from Kent State.

Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston with historic flooding and unprecedented damages. Many of the residents in minority and underserved communities are still struggling with the recovery effort because of a lack of resources. Our CONNECTION team reached out to Wardell Ross Jr. at the Houston chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (HNOMA) to hear about the things the chapter and its members are doing to help local residents.

YL: Tell us about the situation in Houston. How did the storm affect residents (especially underserved and minority communities)?

Wardell Ross Jr (WR): Hurricane Harvey has been devastating

ABOVE: FLOODING IN HOUSTON - Courtesy of Jake Price

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to Houston and those of all cultures, ages, and social-economic statuses. Many have lost everything. It not only dumped an unprecedented amount of rainfall on the south Texas region (approximately 52 inches) ut that same rainfall has also put great stress on the storm systems (reservoirs and bayous that hold and then eventually carry water to the gulf), which have periodically overflowed and caused flooding in various neighborhoods. Some of those neighborhoods are under mandatory evacuation because the levels of water fluctuate due to the controlled water releases from the nearby reservoirs.

Harvey also helped to produce multiple tornadoes, affecting communities to the west of Houston, and also flooded downtown Houston. Various rescue efforts occurred to evacuate people from their residences, and multiple emergency shelters opened. For example, the George R. Brown Convention Center, with a capacity of 5,000, was accommodating over 9,000, but at one point was accommodating 10,000. Tens of thousands of people will need help for months to come. Just like most communities, the underserved and minority communities spread through Houston were affected just as significantly. As an example, Sunny Side and historic Fifth Ward are in areas that are predominantly Hispanic and AfricanAmerican, and a great number of homes and structures were affected. Many don’t have the resources to effectively start the cleanup process.

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As an architectural professional, we can identify and join teams that are participating in these relief and restoration activities.

YL: What kind of community recovery efforts are you involved in?

How do you think you (as an architectural professional) can help rebuild the communities?

WR: Members of HNOMA have been involved in rescuing people from their homes, serving as volunteers in various emergency shelters, and removing debris and damaged materials/goods from damaged homes. As an architectural professional, we can identify and join teams that are participating in these relief and restoration activities. As problem solvers, we can help to assess, formulate, and mobilize volunteers to produce real restoration efforts.

getting as much help as other areas in Houston. We will mobilize crews of people to go into identified homes, where we will help to remove damaged materials/goods, clean and sanitize the damaged homes affected by water infiltration.

YL: Anything you would like to add?

WR: The recovery effort here in Houston will be months, if not years. NOMA will be involved and stand by the victims of the minority communities. We definitely would love for others to join us in any capacity. â–

YL: Tell us about the community-service project you are presenting at the annual NOMA conference in Houston.

WR: We have currently planned to work with Rebuilding Together Houston for our Day of Service on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017 (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.), where we help repair the homes of low-income, elderly homeowners. The repairs occur both inside and outside of homes that frequently are 50, 60, 70 years old and older and in various states of disrepair. We have decided to expand our efforts to areas that have great damage due to the flood for those who are elderly, underserved, and in minority communities who may not be

ABOVE: DISASTER CENTER - Courtesy of Jake Price

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IN A CRISIS, WE ARE CITIZENS FIRST, ARCHITECTS SECOND

ARCHITECTS SEEK TO FIND THEIR UNIQUE PLACE IN RELIEF EFFORTS WITH THEIR EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

BY SARAH KILLINGSWORTH

Sarah Killingsworth, Assoc. AIA is a designer at Stantec and a graduate of the University of Houston, from which she received a Bachelor of Architecture in 2015. She currently serves as a director on the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) as well as being a member of the NDSA Coalition with AIA Advocacy and a constituent group president with the University of Houston Alumni Association.

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Harvey was an unmitigated disaster. For many in the Houston metroplex and large swathes of southeast Texas, it was a tragedy, destroying lives, homes, and livelihoods. The hurricane has been estimated to have cost us $180 billion in damages – a staggering scale of humanitarian and built environment destruction.

response to Harvey.

Perhaps sprawl and bad architecture are to blame, and perhaps architects in southeast Texas must reflect on these things. But while this thoughtful critique of policy will be important as we move forward, the first effort from architects must focus on recovery.

Fundamentally, Harvey is quantified by its architectural cost, which puts our architectural community in a unique position to actively respond—both as architects and as citizens.

“What can an architect do?”

The most difficult question asked in the aftermath of a natural disaster like Harvey is “how can I help?” Challenges during the first wave of relief and assessment can be so undefined, and once the immediate needs of triage are completed and the community is stable, what work can we realistically accomplish to heal broken hearts and salvage damaged property? The second question is then “what can an architect do?”

Helping school districts recover and rebuild (Chris Hopkins, Designer, Stantec) Sheldon ISD on the northeast side of Houston saw plenty of flooding in their school facilities. From “watching the news and general word of mouth,” said Chris Hopkins, they knew their clients in Sheldon needed help. In the days immediately following Harvey’s flooding, while the Stantec offices were still closed, Stantec employees communicated via email about a new opportunity that arose from checking in with school district administration clients– going in as a work crew and getting the water and debris out of flooded schools.

“We have a great staff, so there was no issue finding volunteers,” Hopkins stated. “But it was difficult helping to organizing the actual cleanup. We went from volunteers to actually leading cleanup crews of students and district janitorial staff.” The district was overwhelmed by the work ahead of them – just a few days of rain meant months of recovery.

When faced with difficult questions about priority and next steps, an architect’s ability to understand “context” is important.

Every disaster affects a community differently, often requiring an understanding of the community context to properly direct relief efforts, volunteers, and specific donations toward the greatest impact. In a neighborhood without running water or power, are clothes really the best donation?

From a suggestion by the district as they struggled to get their students back in school, the Stantec office in Houston started state-wide donation drives across their Texas offices to resupply students, teachers, and classrooms with the materials they need to learn and teach after experiencing near total loss in some cases.

Hundreds of pound of school supplies – backpacks, notebooks, pencils, tissues – were given to the district.

We are trained to work under great pressure, to produce critical plans at the right time, to catch critical details and to see the larger vision of our solutions. Reliability in times of crisis must be our profession’s calling card. From large leadership efforts to small, meaningful communication, architects can effect great change in

Working in the educational market is a unique opportunity in this instance, because, as Hopkins says, we are involved as citizens in many aspects of education, either as parents or as former students, “so we can understand, relate, and address those that are going through hard times within this market.”

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Here are the stories of Houston architects who found themselves able to give back in meaningful ways – both large and small – as their communities needed them.

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Fundamentally, Harvey is quantified by its architectural cost, which puts our architectural community in a unique position to actively respond - both as architects and as citizens.

School districts are often unfamiliar with the process of clean-up and repair ahead of them, but this is a chance for architects to be proactive in their client relationships by advising and being visible.

Owners should feel the architect is in their corner, and what better way than with giving and volunteering when times are difficult?

Providing solid advice for renovating and cleaning from architectural experience (Bao Loi, RA, NCARB) Bao Loi, a young licensed architect in Houston, has been active both in volunteering for clean-up as well as daily social media posts that give easy to follow “hurricane Harvey tips” This series of posts was for the many overwhelmed homeowners and architects seeking to rebuild, tackling permit requirements, to removing damaged finishes, to hiring a trustworthy contractor.

He was motivated, he said, by a citizen’s concern: having just bought a house. “I know how much of an investment it is so I wanted to share my knowledge on what homeowners can do to protect their investments […] as they begin to reconstruct,” he mentioned.

Architects have specialized knowledge and skills that directly relate to the needs of Houstonians as they rebuild, and we have the resources to find the answers to rebuilding questions that others may not have. Not all helpful support during relief efforts means active volunteering and mucking out—sometimes it’s as simple as being a knowledge resource for our neighbors and friends, overwhelmed by the rebuilding tasks ahead of them. And for Loi, even the ARE process contributed to those skills: “…the process of going through the exams and going through my experience with IDP has taught me how to figure things out. As architect, I think most would agree that we are really great problem solvers which means research is vital to staying relevant as an architect.”

ABOVE: STANTEC EMPLOYEES GETTING THE WATER AND DEBRIS OUT OF FLOODED SCHOOLS - Courtesy Stantec

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Loi says, “because during the aftermath there will be those who have lost everything and will need a helping hand to rebuild their homes.” For architects, knowledge is power, and our power is in problem solving.

Initiative is a superpower Architects don’t have to be superheroes to aid communities in a disaster. Architects do, however, need to involve themselves in rebuilding, disaster relief, and helping their neighbors and communities in times of crisis, because initiative and visibility are important for a profession that is struggling to define its relevance to outsiders.

One thing we should strongly consider is to throw our support behind social impact design programs -- including new funding models for pro-bono design work such as the National Design Services Act (NDSA). If we want to support our communities in need such as the aftermath of Harvey, we need to make such efforts sustainable and attractive to both the profession and the markets in need, which the AIA believes the NDSA could offer.

Never heard of the NDSA? The National Design Services Act (NDSA) would enable recent architecture graduates to provide design and planning services for their communities in exchange for student debt forgiveness. This will contribute to the economic revitalization of underserved or recovering communities while relieving financial burdens on the next generation of architects, elevating the profession in the process. Like the stories above, we support efforts to use architecture to help. Sign up at the link below to follow this bill as it evolves: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5ZDKRQT

For Loi, it’s significant how architects are typically perceived, and what he can actively contribute to healthier perceptions. “I also feel like, [as] architects, we are often looked at as a field that serves the wealthy elites or the top 10% of society. This to me was the main factor because I wanted the general public to know who we are as architects and the value we can provide […] it’s important that we engage the general public in some kind of way that would let them know we can serve them.”

Crisis means a dedication to both urgent needs and long-term rebuilding, and as architecture professionals we can involve ourselves in the conversation early and often rather than waiting on invitation. We already possess great personal initiative to work hard and do what’s right by our fellow citizens, and we should be more encouraged by events and stories like these to utilize it. ■

Two interesting suggestions he has for his fellow young architects: first, to join an organization that helps the community, such as Habitat for Humanity or participate in the AIA’s Safety Assessment Program (SAP); and second, to learn a trade. Both are relevant, BELOW LEFT: STANTEC EMPLOYEES GETTING THE WATER AND DEBRIS OUT OF FLOODED SCHOOLS - Courtesy Stantec BELOW RIGHT: BAO LOI PROVIDING SOLID ADVICE FOR RENOVATING AND CLEANING FROM ARCHITECTURAL EXPERIENCE - Courtesy Sarah Killingsworth

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SAFETY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM AN INTERVIEW WITH AIA HOUSTON

BY YU-NGOK LO

Janis Brackett, AIA

Catherine Callaway, AIA

serves as AIA Strategic Councilor At Large. After Harvey hit Houston, she volunteered to lead AIA Houston’s Disaster/Resilience Task Force. Brackett served as 2014 AIA Houston President and continues to serve as Director of Architecture Foundation Houston. As Vice President and Community Team Leader at Kirksey, Brackett oversees Religious, Recreation, Cultural/Civic and Non-Profit projects.

is the 2017 AIA Houston President. A native Houstonian, Callaway authored and leads a walking tour of the art and architecture of the University of Houston, as one of the offerings of the Architecture Center Houston public tours program. She is a senior associate at Kirksey and project manager on the Community Team, focused on Religious, Recreation, Cultural/Civic and Non-Profit projects.

After Hurricane Harvey, there has been a dire need for architects to quickly assess the safety of many damaged buildings. Our CONNECTION team reached out to the AIA Houston chapter and spoke with Janis Brackett and Catherine Callaway, who attended the AIA Safety Assessment Program (SAP) taught by Michael Lingerfelt, FAIA. YL: Tell us about the AIA Safety Assessment Program. What is it?

Janis Brackett (JB): The AIA Safety Assessment Program training provides architects, engineers, building officials, and inspectors with the knowledge and protocol to evaluate homes, buildings, and infrastructure in the aftermath of a disaster. This professional expertise is provided as a volunteer service and is based on the state of California’s training program. It has benefited numerous communities, resulting in thousands of safety evaluations and saving municipalities millions of dollars. Several of us went to Austin for SAP training, led by Strategic Councilor Michael Lingerfelt, FAIA. A second round of training was held in Houston, taught by Ann Somers, AIA of Mississippi. In response to Harvey, there are more than 170 newly trained assessors in the region. https://www.aia.org/resources/9271-the-safety-assessmentprogram-sap

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YL: What are some of the programs AIA Houston is working with to help the local communities?

JB: We are still in the very early stages of our efforts. Our initial thoughts are to analyze the short-term, intermediate, and long-term strategies to improve the community. We are looking at how we can help the region recover from Harvey and prepare for the next major event. The AIA Houston Disaster/Resilience Task Force is compiling best practices for rebuilding, including detention, lowimpact design strategies, insurance requirements and benefits, wind resistance, safety factors above floodplains, and material selections. YAF Chair Marsha Bowden immediately stepped up to help the task force chart our direction.

AIA Houston President Catherine Callaway frames every conversation with a reminder that our profession’s goal is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. She has charged every committee to incorporate resilience in programming going forward.

Committee on the Environment’s Gulf Coast Green Symposium will be focused on resilience. We are also evaluating how mitigation strategies protect properties. For instance, our Committee on Architecture for Health is developing a program evaluating the Texas Medical Center (largest medical complex in the world): Changes implemented after 2001 Tropical Storm Allison resulted in significantly less damage during Harvey.

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In the days and weeks after Harvey, we weren’t sure how to accept. As we move forward and see the devastation to our neighbors in Florida and Puerto Rico, we hope that all members will continue to focus on resilience.

YL: Tell us about the work you are doing with the local task force you are leading (advisers and their roles as well).

JB: We have unique skill sets and knowledge to facilitate and lead the recovery efforts. More than recovery, we are determined to help shape the future by affecting policy and regulation. In addition to coordinating the local SAP training, we are meeting with affiliated organizations and local officials. Harris County Engineering head John Blount, PE, invited us to participate in a workshop to discuss regulatory changes needed to the Flood Plain Management and Infrastructure Regulations. Board Director Julie Hendricks, AIA,

LEED fellow, and Treasurer John Clegg, AIA, are participating in a city of Houston task force led by Chief Resilience Officer, or “Flood Czar,” Steve Costello. We have benefited immensely from lessons learned by our colleagues. Strategic Councilor Illya Azaroff of New York and Michael Lingerfelt of Florida and Texas have been great resources for our team. Illya, founding co-chair of Design for Risk and Reconstruction, reminds us that we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Even five years after Sandy, New York continues to rebuild and learn. In addition to our Strategic Council colleagues, we’re getting advice and support from Bob Berkebile, FAIA of BNIM, the

ABOVE: HURRICANE DAMAGE - Courtesy Christof Spieler

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Perkins+Will resilience team, and of course AIA staff, including Rachel Minnery, FAIA.

community respond. We need to encourage resilient approaches to build back better.

YL: What are some of the lessons learned after Hurricane Harvey?

What’s the recovery effort moving forward?

YL: Anything else you would like to add?

JB: We could not fathom more than 50 inches in a short time, but it became our reality. Memorial Day Flood 2015, Tax Day Flood April 2016, and then Harvey. Areas which had never flooded were under water for days. Many in our community felt – and continue to feel – completely lost. While the majority of our members practice commercial architecture, the residents of Houston are the ones who could use guidance. How can we, as professionals, help in the next event? It will happen again and again. We need to have strategies in place so we can react more quickly and help the

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JB: We have been offered support by members nationwide, including a generous grant from AIA New York. In the days and weeks after Harvey, we weren’t sure how to accept. As we move forward and see the devastation to our neighbors in Florida and Puerto Rico, we hope that all members will continue to focus on resilience. We welcome best practices and lessons learned from all colleagues. Young professionals are critical to our resilience – they will continue to inherit the outcomes of decisions we make today.

Business continuity is critical for our members. While we know of a

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few practices impacted, we are working with AIA National to contact every member to see if we can help. Our chapter is also working to rebuild. Our current AIA offices flooded. Our new Architecture Center Houston, currently under construction, received 4 feet of water. As a result, we are enjoying new opportunities to connect with our membership by hosting events and meetings in various members’ offices. AIA Houston staff has done an amazing job of rebounding and keeping the focus on our future. Besides the work we are doing as professionals, many members have been working hard to help friends and strangers to muck out offices and homes.

Mark Montgomery, AIA of Louisiana, was a citizen architect in the beloved Cajun Navy, volunteering to rescue stranded families. The shining light in this devastation is the way our community has come together. We are Houston Strong. â–

OPPOSITE: SAFETY ASSESSMENT TRAINING IN SESSION - Courtesy Christof Spieler ABOVE: COMMERCE PM - Courtesy Christof Spieler

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THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IRMA AND MARIA A CONVERSATION WITH AIA FLORIDA / CARIBBEAN

BY YU-NGOK LO

Vicki Long, Hon. AIA has served as the executive vice president/CEO of the Florida Association of American Institute of Architects since 2004. In addition, she serves as the administrative lead for the AIA Florida/Caribbean Region, the Florida Foundation for Architecture and the Florida Architects Political Action Committee. Long is the 2013 past president of the Council of Architecture Component Executives and served on the AIA Board of Directors 2012-2014. She has participated on numerous AIA board committees, the Secretary’s Advisory Committee and the 2013 Executive Committee. She earned her Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation in 2003 and has served on board leadership positions for the Tallahassee Society of Association Executives Foundation, the Florida Society of Association Executives and the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce Professional Women’s Forum and the Leon County Homeless Shelter..

The combination of Hurricane Irma and Maria devastated the Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rico regions. It is a “perfect storm event” that none of the residents experienced before. Homes, buildings, trees, etc. were destroyed, leaving thousands of storm victims without electricity and clean water. Was there enough preparation?

Were the structures constructed properly so that it could sustain a hurricane at that magnitude? What are the lessons learnt? Our CONNECTION team spoke with Vicki Long, Hon. AIA of the AIA Florida / Caribbean Region to talk about these issues and the situation there.

YL: What's the situation there after Hurricane Irma and Maria?

Vicki Long (VL): Many in our region suffered devastation — in the Virgin Islands the built environment was almost completely wiped out. Now, with Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is recovering from widespread loss of power and loss of much of their critical infrastructure. The situation there is dire. Here in Florida, the Keys were hardest hit with many homes in the upper keys destroyed.

Schools have reopened but are anything but back to normal.

Around the state, Jacksonville and areas on both coasts experienced flooding and storm surge. Reports from the Collier County area indicate that hotels, like the Naples Grande, suffered major damage and will be months in rebuilding. Schools were designated as shelters, interrupting the school year and the buildings themselves are showing the wear and tear.

YL: The situation in Puerto Rico is very dire. Working without energy, and potentially clean water, could compound the mass exodus to the US mainland and continue the economic crisis.

Architects are leaving the territory too. How can we support our professional colleagues to stay in place so their valuable work can continue?

VL: Currently, the federal government mobilization to help in Puerto

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...in addition to offering our help to our members in Puerto Rico, we must also support the architects working to ensure creation and enforcement of building codes that will protect the populace.

Rico seems to finally be gaining traction and bringing much needed aid and resources to the island. Even weeks out, many are still without power and with little access to communication. According to recent e-mails from architect and professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Pilarin Ferrer-Viscasillas, AIA, there are many on the island who are blaming the materials used to build homes as the reason for such widespread destruction of the built environment. “The truth is they were built incorrectly, not taking into account building codes and regulations and also zoning laws,” says Viscasillas. “I always tell my students in my Materials and Construction Methods course, good architecture is not dependent on the material, it is dependent on good design and construction.”

This goes to show, in addition to offering our help to our members in Puerto Rico, we must also support the architects working to ensure creation and enforcement of building codes that will protect the populace.

Also, according to my discussions with Vice President Brian Turnbull, AIA, there is a great deal of activity in the Virgin Islands although communications are difficult. The island is “in bad shape” but some areas have power and officials are “working feverishly”

to restore even more areas. He reported help is coming from Tennessee, Alabama and even Florida to help in that regard. The number of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers personnel is “abundant” and the airport has just reopened for a few commercial flights. Street activity is increasing also due to the relaxing of curfews that were as strict as 12:00 to 6:00 and have, he said, been recently increased to allow for 12-hour days. Based on the magnitude of the event, he says he is cautiously “optimistic” especially as compared to similar events decades ago that would have taken years for recovery. The chapter members have limited if any communications, but he hopes they will be able to “organize ourselves and pull ourselves together” for assessment to determine how both AIA Florida and AIA can be of future assistance.

YL: How are the local AIA components helping the victims affected by the Hurricane? Is there any specific programs organized by the emerging professionals?

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rebuilding effort in the areas that were hardest hit. On the national front, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is investigating the best way to offer aid to our members in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean Region.

YL: What are the lessons learnt?

VL: Prepare, prepare, and then prepare more. Having disaster plans in place before an event occurs is essential in being able to react quickly to the situation. Creating and maintaining relationships with building and city officials before a disaster occurs is key. Without these relationships, communication is slow and valuable time is lost. On a positive note, we learned that in times of crisis, people are willing to help each other, even strangers who live hundreds of miles away. ■

VL: In Miami, the local chapter organized a Safety Assessment Program (SAP) training session, giving the over 50 architects the tools and certification they need to assess the habitability of a structure after a natural disaster. Post-training, Miami members plan on reaching out to Puerto Rico to assist in the recovery effort. Several other components are considering following suit by organizing their own SAP training sessions in the future. AIA Florida reached out to members who were previously SAP certified, updated their contact information, verified their credential and made them aware of volunteer opportunities in Monroe County through emails and social media. .

YL: How do you think architects can help in re-building?

VL: Architects are problem solvers by training. They can assess the conditions and build to suit in almost any environment. Because they consider the environmental variables and combine them with lived experience, architects will be integral in the recovery and

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RETHINKING REFUGEE COMMUNITIES

BY ELIZA MONTGOMERY

Eliza Montgomery is a designer at Ennead Architects. Current projects include the Peabody Essex Museum Expansion and the Arizona Center for Law and Society. She also coleads Ennead Lab’s Rethinking Refugee Communities project. Montgomery has lectured on the project at a number of events including the 2014 Humanitarian Innovation Conference at Oxford and the UN Habitat 2016 Conference at the UN Headquarters. She holds a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies from Bard College.

Through a range of research and advocacy projects, Ennead Lab serves as a think tank where we as architects and designers can ask, explore, and rethink big questions about our changing world.

For me, one of the most important questions has been what our role as urban spatial thinkers is in the growing refugee-migration crisis. Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of co-leading one of Ennead Lab’s longest-running projects, Rethinking Refugee Communities, directed at addressing this challenge.

Turkey. The camp on the right is Za’atari in Jordan. At face value, the camp in Turkey might be thought of as a preferable place to be. Refugees are given sturdier containers as shelters instead of tents. Turkish workers are hired to keep the camp clean. Metal detectors at the entrance keep the camp safe. There are power lines, streetlights, and playgrounds. But when reporters have interviewed refugees there, they’ve found a much higher level of frustration than in other settlements.

We began working on this project in 2012, when we were asked by a law professor at Stanford University and the UN Refugee Agency to bring a spatial perspective to the discussion on the growing refugee- migration crisis. When we began studying the crisis, there were 45.2 million forcibly displaced people worldwide.

Since then, this number has grown to 65.6 million, the highest number of displaced people on record. The phenomenon is not going away and could easily continue to grow dramatically with more environmental disasters predicted. As architects and designers, how can we use our skills to create opportunities from these crises? Can refugees be an asset to host communities?

If the planning is too constrained and structured, refugees don’t have a reason or a drive to partake in activities to make the place a home for themselves. In Za’atari, on the other hand, refugees have undertaken an enormous amount of self-driven modifications to the camp to address their needs. The main road in the camp is nicknamed the “Champs Elysee” because there is a vibrant market filling the length of the camp that grew from the refugees’ initiatives.

The camp is by no means a desirable place to live, but compared with others I’ve visited, I witnessed more energy, ambition, and optimism in the refugees who were residing there. Perhaps this is because they created more agency for themselves.

We began by studying the most emblematic spatial remnant of these forced-migration crises, the refugee camp. Refugee camps have traditionally been designed for short time frames. The hope, of course, is that the conflict will get resolved and refugees will move back to their home countries or be resettled permanently somewhere else. Both outcomes rarely happen quickly. Today, the average length of protracted refugee situations is 26 years.

Refugee camps have indefinite time frames, and planning strategies must be rethought to address this. We cannot just design for the emergency situation – we must consider and allow for transition, change, and integration or exit scenarios.

When conditions allow for increased agency, refugees have the opportunity to reclaim their lives and make the place a home.

Of course, in emergency crises, safety and health cannot be disregarded. But in these situations where refugees have been deprived of their sense of belonging, it is equally important for them to be able to tailor the space to their needs. Whether they will be there for the short or long term, it is essential for the settlement to be a safe environment and a place where opportunities can be created. So the question for us as designers is, “How do we design with enough structure to maintain safety and health, but also with enough flexibility so that the refugees have a sense of ownership?”

Whether it is short-term or long-term, no one benefits from a relationship of dependency. The left photo is a camp in Kilis,

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Most images of refugee camps available to the general public

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ABOVE TOP: NIZIP CONTAINER CAMP - Courtesy of YILMAZ/A.A./SIPA/Rex Features ABOVE BOTTOM: REFUGEE CAMP - Courtesy of Eliza Montgomery NEXT PAGE: RETHINKING REFUGEE COMMUNITIES: - Courtesy of EnneadLab

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highlight the grid-like plans and endless rows of tents. But when you really look inside, you find that their components are similar to any city. They have economies, markets, schools, health centers, and public gathering spaces. They have all the components of cities, but they haven’t been planned or run like cities. Furthermore, because of political constraints, they are often discouraged from exchange with neighboring communities. However, even with these rules, it has been proved that refugee populations have actually benefited existing communities, both through economics and infrastructure. If we treat neighboring communities as partners rather than hosts, both sides benefit. Framed this way, partner cities should actually be competing for refugees.

Because of these situations’ complexity, no one urban plan or building design will be the solution. Instead we’ve been working to create a framework for critical thinking that can apply to many places. The framework of tools is applied across a matrix of settlement phases – emergency, transition, sustainability, etc.

– as well as three spatial scales – macro (the country or state), meso (the existing cities or communities), and micro (the zoomedin scale of new development). Some of the tools are software components, and some are planning guidelines.

On the macro scale, we’re developing a site-selection tool that will allow stakeholders to take an inventory of native and refugee populations, noting what resources they have an abundance of and what they are lacking. Locations for refugees can be better chosen based on that inventory so that humanitarian aid can be used to provide resources for not just the refugees, but also the existing population. As the settlement develops and transitions, more and more resources can be shared, resulting in a better “city” for both populations.

On the meso scale, the tools focus on highlighting the benefits of alternate planning typologies. Refugee camps traditionally have been designed as separated settlements with clear boundaries.

But this is not always the most appropriate. Smaller satellite settlements dispersed among existing communities may be appropriate for more agrarian lifestyles that need more land for farming. Urban integration might be appropriate for an existing city that has a declining population. In this case, there may be underutilized or abandoned infrastructure that can be used by

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refugees, and the incoming population could help jump-start the economy, ultimately benefiting the existing population. In each typology, the toolkit aims to identify the best opportunities for shared resources and how these can transform over time to benefit both populations.

The micro scale consists of a catalog of spatial and adjacency vignettes that are intended to accompany the quantitative parameters set by UNHCR. Each vignette isolates a specific planning component to point out the benefits and pitfalls of different spatial options.

Instead of listing prescriptive guidelines, the kit provides tools to develop site- and culturally specific design ideas that will allow for flexibility and engagement for the people living there. The tools are designed to bring together expertise from many fields and are to be used by all three players – humanitarian workers, partner communities, and refugees themselves.

Working with UNHCR, we’ve had the opportunity to engage in a few case studies and research site visits in Rwanda, Ethiopa, Jordan, and Nepal. Each situation has its own set of constraints. These constraints, when paired with the short emergency time frame and minimal funds available, often drive the humanitarian response toward the most efficient, simple solution for safety and survival of the people at risk. But can we turn the problem on its head?

Can we rethink the constraints to turn them into opportunities?

As designers, we’re trained to solve problems this way, and we should use these skills to help foster more mutually beneficial collaborations between partner communities and displaced refugees. Through this design thinking, humanitarian aid can be stretched further to benefit both populations, while simultaneously fostering a longer-term ambition to improve these spaces that become home for refugees, no matter the duration. ■

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AIA DISASTER ASSISTANCE HANDBOOK

A CONVERSATION WITH THE DISASTER ASSISTANCE COMMITTEE

BY YU-NGOK LO

Thomas R. Hurd, AIA Hurd is the founder and owner of Spatial Designs Architects and Energy Solutions, Mason City, Iowa. He holds a bachelor of arts in architecture and a master’s in architecture from Iowa State University.

Hurd has presented at dozens of renewable/sustainable conferences regionally, nationally, and internationally and serves on many regional and national boards. He is a former chair of the AIA Disaster Assistance Committee.

The country needs our help as “citizen architects” more than ever after the recent hurricanes. Architects and emerging professionals all over the country are eager to help. However, the question is ... how? The AIA Disaster Assistance Handbook is a comprehensive document that helps architects better understand their roles in the recovery effort and the appropriate response to disasters.

Through various case studies, the handbook also illustrates how architects can work with communities on disaster response and preparedness efforts. Our CONNECTION team reached out to one of the contributing authors, Tom Hurd, AIA, to introduce this valuable resource to our readers.

manager of the AIA Disaster Assistance Program and Resilience and Adaptation Program; and myself. We then discussed the option in our Disaster Assistance Committee (DAC) meeting and decided such a handbook is necessary. The original intent was just to update it with new information. As we got into it, we found it needed further explanation in many areas, case studies for easier relating to the topics, and even new content. For example, resilient design was kind of alluded to in the original document but not really developed like it needed to be. That and how to implement disasterassistance programs around the country became important adds to the document.

YL: What prompted the creation of this handbook? What was the original intent?

YL: Tell us about the handbook and its structure.

Thomas R. Hurd (TH): There have been an increasing number and severity of disasters over the years, with dollar amounts also growing drastically as evidenced by Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and now Harvey and Irma, not to mention wildfires and earthquakes.

Hence, it was a kind of joint decision between Rachel Minnery, senior director of Sustainable Development Policy; Lindsay Brugger,

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TH: It is set up identifying the hazards vulnerability and risk of a community followed by risk reduction and mitigation techniques.

Those chapters are followed by emergency and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. It is set up that way so people and communities can look at the whole or any part they need right then to better develop their own plans, mitigation, and recovery operations as needed. Case studies for each area s-how some of the real life factors that can happen and how they can be properly handled.

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It takes many experts with different and direct disaster experiences to put together this well rounded document.

YL: Tell us about the authors and contributors.

YL: Anything you would like to add?

TH: Our DAC committee including Rachel and Lindsay were instrumental in editing content along with the AIA Resilience Network as well as AIA State Coordinators and even past DAC members for key issues. It takes many with different and direct disaster experiences and knowledge to put together this well rounded document. They all experienced different levels and disaster types as well as provided coordination with local, state, and national government not to mention a lot of private interactions and lessons learned.

TH: The overall goal is to continue to provide leadership in our communities to provide better design, mitigation, response and recovery by minimizing the effects of a disaster for both the short and long term by getting people and business back on their feet as quick as possible. In addition we hoped to set up a framework that can continue to evolve and provide better and better learning from each disaster to improve life and happiness for future generations.â–

ABOVE: FROM POTENTIAL TO REALITY - Courtesy of AIA OPPOSITE: DISASTER ASSISTANCE HANDBOOK - Courtesy of AIA

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FEATURE | PRO BONO / NON-PROFIT WORK

ELEVATING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE THROUGH DESIGN EMERGING PROFESSIONALS AND PRO BONO WORK AT DLR GROUP

BY KATE THUESEN

Elevating the human experience through design is DLR Group’s brand promise, and our professionals live that mission every day with our clients around the world. A portion of our efforts is dedicated to delivering pro bono work to organizations in need, and I’m pleased to interview a handful of DLR Group’s young architects and design talent about the work they are doing with pro bono clients across the country. I talked to emerging professionals about investing in their communities by leveraging their design skills to provide housing, renovate a school, design a youth garden program, and build a community center. The work they are doing enables organizations to meet their goals and aspirations, more effectively reaching their target audiences. By partnering with these organizations, DLR Group’s young architects and designers deliver thoughtful, meaningful spaces – and in one case, delicious meals.

Kate Thuesen, AIA is a multi-talented architect with vast experience in both the K-12 and Higher Education industries. In addition to her primary role as a project architect at DLR Group, Thuesen takes on a variety of other tasks including business development and recruitment, making her a knowledgeable and reliable resource within the company. She is passionate about cultivating meaningful, longlasting relationships, as well as creating unique and innovative design solutions for her clients.

Early in her career, Thuesen lived and worked for more than two years in Madrid, Spain, where she gained an appreciation for international architecture and design. She also gained insight into the importance of embracing diversity and learning about new cultures to support personal and professional success. Thuesen is currently the AIA Young Architects Regional Director (YARD) representing the Central States Region.

Amy Dery

Claire Lonsbury, AIA

is currently a member of the K-12 and Higher Education teams at DLR Group. She has been working in the architecture and construction industry since 2011 in many different design sectors including civic, hospitality, mixed-Use, multi-family, as well as custom furniture design.

is most experienced in the design of K-12 and Higher Education facilities, but also works on Civic, MixedUse, and Sports projects. She is an active member of AIA Minnesota, currently serving as Secretary of the AIA Minnesota Board and Co-chair of the AIA Minnesota Housing Advocacy Committee.

Jose Sanchez, Assoc. AIA

Lindsey Piant Perez, AIA

is a retail expert with extensive domestic and international experience. He believes a collaborative design process can create imaginative retail solutions to benefit clients, consumers, and local communities.

is one of DLR Group's sustainable design experts and serves as a national resource on LEED Green Globes, and Architecture 2030 project planning and certification processes. She has been involved with more than 500,000 SF of renovation projects for education clients.

Kate Thuesen (KT): Give a brief description of your pro bono project. Did you partner with the AIA or another nonprofit?

Amy Dery (AD): For our project, DLR Group has partnered with Easter Seals Colorado to build a new bunk house at the Rocky Mountain Village Camp in Empire, Colo. The mission of Easter Seals is to “partner with individuals and families to reduce the impact of disability or health challenges and to enhance quality of life.” The new bunk house will be located near a fishing pond and outdoor stage, replacing an existing arts-and-crafts building that is scheduled to be demolished.

This facility will house 32 bunks and includes a kitchen, living area, fully accessible bathrooms (designed beyond ADA standards per Easter Seals requirements), and private bedrooms for counselors.

Currently, the University of Colorado owns the land where the Easter Seals camp is located, and they lease the land in order to house over 100 campers each summer. One goal for this new bunk

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house is for it to be rentable outside of the summer-camp season, allowing it to be self-funded for the needs of the Easter Seals. More information about the Easter Seals organization can be found on their website (http://www.easterseals.com/co/).

Claire Lonsbury (CL): For our project, we worked with Urban Ventures (UV), a nonprofit located in South Minneapolis serving families in poverty through “programs and social enterprises that empower families to take control of their futures.” For over 20 years, they’ve been offering a variety of programs for families and kids. Their kids programs range from sports teams, tutoring, youth groups for teens, early-childhood learning, after-school programs, and summer programs.

A recent strategic-planning initiative by the organization has determined that UV’s impact on kids and families would be more effective by combining their myriad programs for kids and young adults into a K-8 charter school on their campus. The organization

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE BELOW: EASTER SEALS ROCKY MOUNTAIN CAMPGROUND - Building Elevations - Courtesy DLR Group

currently shares a school facility with a college-prep high school, so they have the capacity and infrastructure to support a school.

However, they are looking to renovate their current space to better suit the vision of their curriculum, which will encourage 21stcentury learning through non-traditional classroom spaces, makers spaces, and flexible learning areas. DLR Group became involved with Urban Ventures through a personal connection I had within the organization.

Lindsey Piant-Perez (LP): My DLR Group Professional Development Grant focused on planning, designing, and implementing a food garden at an Orlando-area school. Many schools have educational gardens, but I wanted to study how gardens can supplement the food stream and understand an edible garden’s impact on children’s health and wellness. Personally, I had a stake in my project, as it directly impacted my children, who attend Trinity Lutheran Downtown School in Orlando, Fla. I was very fortunate to have the Childhood Development Center (CDC), the K-8 school, and the church supporting the idea, as they already had plans in process to continue improving the healthy meals they offered at the school.

I was awarded a grant from my firm in January 2017 with only a few weeks left to plant seeds for the current planting season.

I was able to find a community partner in Fleet Farming, whose primary focus is to turn lawns into urban farms, but they also have an installation/planting program. By bringing a community partner into the conversation, we were able to design and implement our garden within five weeks of being awarded the grant. While we awaited our first harvest, I worked with the school on ideas to introduce the garden to the school community. We came up with a garden challenge, where students studied various gardens or how crops grow. Students from the CDC through eighth grade spent time working in the garden. In early May 2017, we celebrated our first harvest. We blessed the garden, we had tasting stations, and supplied basil and kale to a local popsicle vendor for the kids to

try. During our first harvest, we served over 4,000 salads and 230 snacks from the garden. Our second harvest was planted in June and, despite our brutal Florida summer, we still enjoy many meals from the garden at the school.

Jose A. Sanchez (JS): Myself and DLR Group designers Huy Le and Andrew Herrera, in collaboration with Geoff Hunt, are designing GrowGood’s urban-farm kitchen and community center. The facility consists of a kitchen, office, storage, post-harvest station, and outdoor multipurpose space, including a classroom and dining and meeting areas. Inspired by GrowGood’s mission to bring a garden to an urban setting, we upcycled two shipping containers to house the program and created a canopy using renewable resources to create dynamic shade. We are partnering with GrowGood, which is a nonprofit organization that works with the Salvation Army.

Founded in 2011, GrowGood Inc. is a Los Angeles-based 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization, creating urban agricultural programs to empower people and transform communities. GrowGood provides fresh produce and opportunities for learning and personal growth through a 1.5-acre farm in Bell, Calif., just a few miles from downtown Los Angeles. We grow thousands of pounds of vegetables and fruit that become part of more than 6,000 meals served each week at the Salvation Army's Bell Shelter. Working with the shelter's staff, we operate a paid job-training program for residents and a "Food for Life" skills series of classes. Shelter clients also have access to the peaceful and healing aspects of being in the garden and among our hundreds of California-native plants.

KT: What inspires you to work on this or other pro bono projects?

AD: This is actually my first pro bono project I have worked on, and I love it. Working with the staff and board volunteers at Easter Seals has been a pleasure and an inspiration. They are very passionate about the work they do. Once this project is finished, I hope to find more pro bono projects to work on.

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BELOW: EASTER SEALS ROCKY MOUNTAIN CAMPGROUND - Site Plan - Courtesy DLR Group

CL: Architecture is inherently people-focused. Our profession exists to make the built environment that we inhabit every day the best, most enjoyable, and effective spaces they can be – and we can’t do that without really understanding the people who use those spaces. I want to have a positive impact on my community, and I truly believe architecture has the power to do that. The challenge is to channel our design skills in a way that will have the impact we desire to see. For me, it’s making life better for those living in poverty or struggling with homelessness in our city. I’ve learned through volunteer design work that architects can have a HUGE impact on helping local organizations see their big visions materialize by stepping in early, when the project is just an idea, and providing design support early on. This is the time in the project where we can have a lot of impact. Often, what becomes of that early design collaboration with the organization are materials that the organization can then use to raise funds, to take the project to the next level, and ideally, pay a design professional to help them

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move the project forward, from producing design documents for a space to the actual construction of a building.

JS: We were inspired to give back to our Los Angeles community, especially in an urban setting such as Bell. GrowGood’s mission of growing hope by creating community aligns with our personal and DLR Group’s core principles of creating a more sustainable built environment, especially by revitalizing and beautifying a leftover heat-island, asphalt parking lot in an industrially zoned part of our city.

KT: What’s the difference between working on this pro bono project and for-profit projects?

AD: Easter Seals is in the DD/CD phase, and thus far, the difference is in how the client and the rest of the construction team communicate. Everyone on the construction team is working pro bono, which seems to foster a very connected team atmosphere

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Architecture is inherently people-focused. Our profession exists to make the built environment that we inhabit every day the best, most enjoyable, and effective spaces they can be - and we can't do that without really understanding the people who use those spaces. and an attitude that we can all work together to get this done. In addition to everyone pulling for the same goal, there is an attitude of resourcefulness when it comes to time, money, and effort: That we can make it happen with material donations, time donations, and very close teamwork.

rewarding.

LP: I think the main difference working on a pro bono project versus other work is the passion you experience alongside the users.

Everyone is grateful and excited about a project’s potential since, prior to the pro bono services, it would be further from reality.

CL: The relationship that is formed between us and the clients is different than for-profit projects because we seek out something to KT: Has working on this project changed your perspective on your which we are personally connected. We already have a personal career or personal life? awareness of our client’s broader goal or societal value and that sort AD: It has definitely impacted me personally, especially since the of relationship. staff and board members at Easter Seals have been a treat to work JS: The biggest difference is that working on pro bono projects is with. There are a number of board members who are parents or a typology that has unique constraints, that forces the design team relatives of disabled children, so to work with people that are so to think creatively to maximize results that benefit the client and the committed to the campers and hear how much a 6,000-square-foot community. Clients want to work closely with the design team, and structure will change children’s lives has been amazing. there is more design flexibility within the budget constraints. This collaboration of working towards a common, altruistic goal is very CL: Working on this project is exciting for me because I’ve always been interested in social- impact design. The process we are using for this project in-house is laying great groundwork for DLR Group to formalize its long-standing pro bono design process, and I enjoy being part of that.

JS: In Los Angeles, we see the need for under-developed, lower socio-economic cities such as Bell to have places where the homeless and people attempting to better their lives can come to be inspired. It has opened our eyes to the needs of our homeless population, the resources that are available to them, and how we can be a part of the solution.

LP: In conjunction with the physical garden, my grant covered the creation of a toolkit, so my firm peers or other schools can use our program as a general guideline to plan, design, and implement their own food garden for a school. This portion of my grant has allowed me to work with other schools and peers and share how they can work to implement a garden themselves.

On a personal level, my oldest child was involved with the garden, and she’s very much into starting one at our home soon. We just recently moved, so we will start our garden early next spring.

KT: How did DLR Group support this pro bono effort?

AD: DLR Group has been very supportive of this pro bono effort by providing the time and resources I need to make site visits, work on the drawing set, and go to client meetings.

CL: DLR Group has been extremely supportive of this effort. We worked closely with our office and sector leaders to launch the project like we would with any other for-profit project, including developing a work plan and a proposal of services for the client. As I’d mentioned earlier, one of our goals with this project is to use it as a test project for formalizing our pro bono project approach at DLR Group, and my local team in Minneapolis has been very supportive of this. My DLR Group colleagues have helped make this project successful by giving feedback in design critiques, reviewing our proposal and work plan contents, and setting up a formal project Q3 -2017

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I've learned through volunteer design work that architects can have a HUGE impact onhelping local organizations see their big visions materialized by stepping in early, when the project is just an idea, and providing design support early on.

number within our time and accounting system so that we can track the project accurately, to name a few.

LP: As a grant winner, I had full support for my project. Support was not only from the grant funding and hours allotted, but from mentorship. Our Global Architecture leader, Pam Touschner, was my mentor for my grant project, and we had biweekly calls to review progress and discuss ideas to expand the reach of the garden at the school and within the community.

We also discussed how www.raisingsustainablekids.com can evolve after the grant period is over. I have been working with DLR Group’s Global Sustainability leader, Premnath Sundharam, on multiple ideas to take school food gardens beyond the case study.

I’m excited to see where Raising Sustainable Kids can go from here, and it all started with DLR Group’s support.

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further assist GrowGood in marketing material to help raise funds for the project. Our Global Retail leader, Brian Arial, and DLR Group’s Los Angeles office are fully supportive in helping move the project forward by providing technical and production assistance in developing permit documentation.

KT: Anything else you’d like to share?

CL: A personal caveat that I’d like to add about pro bono design work: Pro bono design work is effective and a good decision when we have the opportunity to 1) step into a project early and 2) build a long-term relationship with an organization that may not have a history of working with design professionals. By engaging thoughtfully in pro bono work with the right organizations at the right time in the project, we can broaden the impact of architecture on society and create long-term relationships with new clients. This is a win-win situation.

JS: We are excited to be part of a project that is a true hands-on

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BOTTOM RIGHT: RAISING SUSTAINABLE KIDS - Courtesy DLR Group BOTTOM LEFT: GROWGOOD URBAN FARM - Concept - Courtesy DLR Group TOP: GROWGOOD URBAN FARM - Concept - Courtesy DLR Group

community project. We plan to not only be a part of the design and provide architectural services, but we also plan to be part of the build team.â–

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JOURNEYMAN INTERNATIONAL

AN INTERVIEW WITH CARLY ALTHOFF & DANIEL WIENS

BY YU-NGOK LO

Carly Althoff Althoff is a native Californian, recent graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a bachelor's degree in architecture and minor in sustainable environments, and proud alumna of the Journeyman International humanitarian thesis design program. She has always had a passion for serving people and learning about new places and cultures, while at the same time exploring innovative and sustainable design solutions.

Carly is pursuing her dream career as an architect in Southern California while volunteering her time as a humanitarian designer in developing countries.

Daniel Wiens Wiens grew up with a hammer in hand, which led him to California Polytechnic State University’s (Cal Poly) Construction Management Department. While working on his university thesis project he developed a concept for a highly efficient humanitarian design and construction endeavor. In 2009 Journeyman International (JI), a 501c3 non profit was born.

Journeyman International is a crowdsourcing platform connecting volunteer architects, designers, engineers, and project managers with humanitarian needs around the world. It is based in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and it has an impressive portfolio of more than 24 projects constructed and 75 designed in 42 countries. Our CONNECTION team is glad to discuss the organization with Carly Althoff, project coordinator for Journeyman International.

YL: Your organization has an interesting name, “Journeyman International.” Tell us a little bit about it. What do you do, and what’s the organization’s mission?

Carly Althoff (CA): Journeyman International connects skilled university students and professionals in the architecture, construction, and engineering industries with humanitarian organizations around the world to design and manage projects that make a difference. In addition to providing great pro bono services, JI is inspiring and training the next generation of humanitarian designers.

YL: Tell us about the projects your organization completed and what’s in the pipeline.

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CA: JI has 24 projects that have either been fully completed or are in construction. They range from libraries to churches to schools to community centers all over the world. JI has supported humanitarian organizations around the world, with design, engineering, and project management support on a dental clinic in Belize, orphanage in Mexico (http://www.enfoqueciudad.org/), hospital in Ethiopia (being constructed by a female crew), vocational center in Uganda, Young Life dorms in Nicaragua, vocational village in the Dominican Republic (about to go through a hurricane), library in Rwanda, vocational center in the Philippines, and many more. This coming year, we will be working on ...

• Rwanda: Many projects – bamboo woodworking cooperative, agriculture training center, bee/honey cooperative, island backpacker hut cooperative, and lots of libraries!

• Uganda: School • Nigeria: Zwakala Youth Village • Honduras: Sex-trafficking education center • Morocco: Junior Corps Africa – multiuse building • India: Missionary training center • Zimbabwe: ZRSDP school • Malawi: Vocational master plan –

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TOP: PROJECT TEAM MEETING - Courtesy Journeyman International ABOVE LEFT: FINISHED PROJECT - Courtesy Journeyman International ABOVE RIGHT: Courtesy Journeyman International

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Child Legacy International • India: ICIM school and village churches in Ongole YL: Do you often travel and meet with different humanitarian organizations? If yes, tell us about your experience.

CA: Yes, we travel quite often to visit project sites with volunteers and meet the NGOs and communities we work with. Their experiences have the power to make a remarkable impact on the lives of both the design volunteers as well as the local clients they are designing for. We have traveled to meet with the humanitarians we are working with, and we often return home with the most unlikely of friendships having emerged from those trips. Our process allows us to form profound relationships with people from all walks of life, with dreams as diverse as their cultures. For example, our recent trips to Rwanda within the past few years have led to a blossoming partnership with a humanitarian organization called Empowering Villages, which has now allowed JI to establish more permanent

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roots in East Africa via a pipeline of ongoing projects with this company.

YL: What inspired/motivated you to start JI? Why crowdsourcing?

CA: Our motivation springs from the impact that humanitarian design projects have on both the user as well as the designer. We believe in sustainable design as the most powerful weapon against global poverty, and we want more people in the architectural and engineering industries to be able to use this weapon of culturally, ecologically, and socially responsive design. When Daniel completed his first humanitarian project in Belize, he was inspired by the impact it made on the local community as well as his own perspective and values. He wanted to share that experience with as many students and young professionals as possible. With the ultimate goal of this organization being to build and mobilize an army of humanitarian designers and difference-makers to be sent out into the world, we believe crowdsourcing allows JI to build and maintain that army by keeping alumni involved and empowered as

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OPPOSITE: PROJECT IN CONSTRUCTION - Courtesy Journeyman International BELOW: MEETING ONSITE WITH STAKEHOLDERS - Courtesy Journeyman International

they advance their careers.There is a sort of ripple effect happening here.

YL: In addition to AIAS, are there any other industry partners your organization works with?

YL: JI is obviously a nonprofit organization; how do you balance its budget? Besides your work with JI, do you have another full-time job to support yourselves?

CA: JI works with a huge network of businesses and universities throughout the industry to procure, mentor, and fund design projects by volunteers who apply for the program. From architecture megafirms like SOM to leading industry networks like the International Living Future Institute, there is a vast community of support for the JI movement. We refer to corporate sponsors and partners as the "lifeblood" of Journeyman International's mission, and the majority of the connections we make happen through our "JI alumni," who have been through the program and are now out in the workforce, advocating for the urgent need for humanitarian design. â–

CA: The main source of income for JI is through corporate sponsorships. Much of the work is done by volunteers – even administrative, project-management, and coordination work is done by alumni and members of the Journeyman International "family."

Personally, I am one of the many alumni who have remained involved, and I volunteer time outside of my corporate architecture job to help coordinate, design, and oversee projects with JI. As a young professional, my desire is to balance my career as an architect with my passion for serving in the developing world, and Journeyman International is an incredibly fulfilling outlet for attaining that balance. It is possible to pursue a career in this industry while still sustainably making an impact through pro bono work.

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ARCHITECTURE FOR CHILDREN AN INTERVIEW WITH VICKY CHAN

BY VIKKI LEW

Vicky Chan, AIA founded Avoid Obvious Architects in 2012 with offices in New York and Hong Kong. The firm has been pushing sustainable buildings and cities with focus on combining art with green technology. His projects have been exhibited in 37 cities. His volunteering organization, Architecture for Children, teaches architecture on a weekly basis and has taught over 3,000 children about sustainable design and architecture.

VL: Architecture is a very broad subject. How did you come up with a curriculum that focuses on geometry and sustainability?

Building a complex idea using simple geometry also seems the most visually effective exercise. It is always important for them to see what they can build in one to two lessons. Unlike adult classes, these 12-year-old students have shorter attention spans.

Combining geometry in many ways always gives us good results.

We don’t want them to lose interest in architecture by starting with complicated building plans. We tried to ask them to solve a dreamhouse plan, and they were always confused. Sustainability is the most talked about topic in architecture, and we realize architects are facing obstacles today from people with different political views. We believe teaching children early about sustainability nd collaborative thinking can help to save our planet. We are doing our duty as architects to spread the right messages to children.

Vicky Chan (VC): We need to simplify the topic of architecture into elementary ideas. Geometry is a good place to start.

VL: Are there any surprises when you see the children designing with physical models?

This year, the AIA Emerging Professionals Exhibit showcased 33 projects from the rising generation of architects who tackle equity, access, ecology, and sustainability. Among the winners, Vicky Chan, AIA, believes our future will be brighter if children are more equipped with creative and sustainable thinking. He founded Architecture for Children with a group of volunteering architects in Hong Kong and New York to teach children about architecture and sustainability, with the goal of improving communities.

CONNECTION international correspondent Vikki Lew met with Chan in Hong Kong to learn about its mission and aspiration.

VC: Yes. We learn from them as much as they learn from us. We ask them about bridges. One student described a suspension bridge as a big smile. That description is so simple but elegant. If adults come up with ideas like the way children do, we can have more beautiful buildings everywhere. Children build with techniques they know or improvise. There is no right or wrong way. We see children upcycle their exam papers into a wind-turbine tower. That thinking of upcycling is amazing to us. We haven’t reached the point where we can literally turn trash into a new product or buildings. Their ideas are worth promoting.

VL: Students in Hong Kong have very intense study schedules. Is there any concern about architecture being a worthy pursuit and not a distraction from formal study?

VC: Yes. Unfortunately, several students attended the classes wanting to learn about maximizing area. This type of thinking is not ABOVE: MECHANICAL MOVEMENT DEMONSTRATION -- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

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We believe teaching children early about sustainability and collaborative thinking can help to save our planet.

TOP: SMART CITY PLANNING EXERCISE

-- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

ABOVE: GREEN ROOFS AND WATER MANAGEMENT -- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

ABOVE: STRUCTURE BRIDGE

-- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

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wrong, but they already have a perception of architecture being a money- driven profession. They want to go after the money and less about the ideas or dreams. Several students have complained that they didn't learn about technical drawing after a year of study. It was equally disappointing to us. Instead of talking about sustainable cities, they still talk about money. One other teacher teaches students how to win the board game Monopoly by showing all the real estate tricks. I think if students are after money, they should go to those classes. I am not against making money, but it really shouldn't be the single motivation to drive how children learn.

VL: You have also taught architectural classes to young adults.

How is it different teaching to the two groups?

VC: Young adults are difficult. They are more driven by money ABOVE: STUDENTS DESIGNED SUSTAINABLE TOWERS -- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

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and rules. They keep talking about money or why certain designs are against the "law." Without thinking about breaking out of the boundary, they surround themselves with restrictions that are irrelevant in a classroom. They again see architecture and design as a money-making career. It can be, but it is never the idea of why anyone should pick architecture as their profession. They are adults, and it was impossible for me to change them. Adults tend to have more excuses than children. When children didn't do their homework, they will be telling me how they forgot. Adults simply think it is OK not to do homework. Adults have their own set of rules that are impossible to break.

VL: It takes a lot of time and commitment to run the program. Does teaching children about architecture affect how you think in your own practice, Avoid Obvious Architects?

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Children build with technique they know or improvise. There is no right or wrong way.

VC: We do need to relax, and teaching is the way we relax.

Children give us inspiration, ideas, and motivation, so it is a win-win situation for us. It does get intense when we teach three schools at the same time. Unfortunately, school is so caught up with the ideas of meeting a syllabus and forcing teachers to meet certain targets. I think the school in the end gave us more pressure to fill out reports than the students themselves. In general, we respect teachers, but we feel that they are restricted by a lot of rules. It makes the whole idea of teaching and learning very intense and less fun. This affects the way I run my firm: It is not the rule that makes better design; it is about inspiring the team to do better. I also suggest more adults take on volunteering work. I believe our volunteering is the most effective way to tell non-believers that change is possible.

That commitment also makes us look more professional in front of clients.

VL: Are any of your students planning to become architects?

VC: Good suggestion. We have never tracked their development. It is strange in practice to keep personal contact with children. Some children wanted to add me to their social media connection. I have declined all of them. We tried to stay in touch with parents, but they may or may not want the connections after the semester is over.

However, you are very right that it will be a great study to see how the children develop in the long run. We need to work with experts to see how we can measure it. â–

ABOVE: TALL BUILDING WORKSHOP IN NEW YORK -- Courtesy of Vicky Chan / Architecture for Children

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PRO-BONO PROJECTS AT PAYETTE

BY KAREN ROBICHAUD

Karen Robichaud Robichaud is Director of Creative Engagement at Payette. She joined Payette in 2012 as a graphic designer and has since led several communications initiatives from the ground up for the firm.

From the outset, Karen established Payette as a leader among other architecture firms with its social media strategy, leveraging many voices across the firm. Karen is a member of the AIA COTE Communications Task Force and a volunteer for Equity. She is an active member of the BSA and chairs its Equity Roundtable.

Hospitals and other health care facilities can be incredibly stressful places to visit, even in the best of times. Our firm has long been committed to design excellence for health care, having designed hospitals and other facilities consistently throughout our 85-year history. Our commitment to high-caliber design for those in need is best embodied in some of our recent pro bono work.

You Are Here: Wendy’s Welcome to the Emergency Department In 2016, we collaborated with Massachusetts General Hospital for Children (MGHfC) on a video that welcomes kids to the Emergency Department. Conceived by a longtime MGHfC patient, Wendy Wooden, and her mom, Darcy Daniels, with the help of the hospital’s Family Advisory Council, the video aims to make emergency visits less stressful for patients. Wendy and Darcy came up with the idea of providing a welcome guide for kids and families when a friend found themselves in the ED for the first time. It turned out that after various health crises, Wendy and Darcy were pros at what to expect.

Our team transformed a written narrative into a nine-minute animated video that introduces kids to the ED and explains what to expect when receiving treatment. Drawing on the talents of over 20 people in our firm, this video features originally composed music, photography, time-lapse videography, digitized sketching, and voice-over narration by Wendy, who is still a child herself. The video not only pushed the way we approach multimedia opportunities, it also paired senior and emerging staff in project leadership.

Recent graduates joining the firm had the opportunity to develop design processes, train others, and advocate for design solutions.

Since MGHfC started using the video in October 2016, ED doctors and nurses have attested to its ability to calm patients and families.

Each year, the Pediatric ED sees nearly 14,000 visitors, who are

all now welcomed by a real kid, just like them. Watch the video: payette.co/2fHJswx.

The project gave several of the firm’s emerging designers opportunities to stretch their wings, taking on job-captain roles, devising team workflow, and strengthening drawing skills. Three of our core team members shared insight into their experiences.

Mike Lee, designer On his role and how it’s influenced him as a designer: I have always tinkered in animation, often in support of my architectural work. Therefore, my understanding of the tools and workflows ended up pushing me into a "Job Captain" type role. This made me responsible for offering workflow strategies, delegating and coordinating production efforts, and compiling the final deliverable.

I also produced specialty assets such as a particle simulation.

Prior to this project, I hadn't really influenced anyone's workflow other than my own. To coordinate the overall production effort was a level of responsibility that encouraged me to mature as a designer and has given me the confidence to seek out greater responsibility in my architectural work, and it helped develop the skill set to execute that coordination with efficacy.

On how this project impacted his perspective on designing for health care: Health care design seems to be a tricky balance between maximizing utility for workers and providing safe and peaceful environments for patients. It's a complex dichotomy when you get into all of the systems that push and pull on design decisions. The impact this project has on my perspective on health care design is a simplification of all that minutiae by reminding me that complicated design decisions are built on simple, humanistic values.

OPPOSITE: CHARACTER DESIGN SKETCHES AND SCENE FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM VISIT ANIMATION -- Courtesy of Payette

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Garrett House, designer On how this project changed him as a designer: The project brought another dimension to my design dexterity. Often, we objectify architecture with the help of space, time, materiality, and light. The actors involved with our buildings are just as important, if not more, than space itself. This exercise encouraged us to take a step back from capital “A” architecture and rethink what it means to design.

On his role on the project: My role in the project was to “bring lines to life.” I developed the process and workflow to take our ideas from the mind/hand and reimagine them using digital and computational tools. It was important for us to work effectively while creating these customized tools. At the end of the day, it was my

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priority to tell Wendy’s story through the animated Wendy puppet.

After hours of research and self-educating from digging deep into online forums, I designed an approach that would simplify the animation process. Ultimately, this would allow for a larger team to manipulate the Wendy character with ease. Using Adobe Illustrator, the original Wendy hand-drawing was digitalized – ensuring that a well-organized layer structure was maintained. Once redrawn and reimagined using vector graphics, individual layers of the character (i.e. face, eyes, arms, body, feet, etc.) were linked into Adobe After Effects. Once reassembled as a still figure, inverse kinematics (IK) was introduced to develop a skeletal structure within the static drawing. A series of invisible “bones” and “joints” were identified and inserted throughout the body. These nodal points were strategically

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stitched together to form natural anatomical limb motions using the “Duik IK” plug-in. The digitized Wendy “puppet” now had movable parts that could be keyed along a time slider. This was our first Wendy rig.

character. He would sketch depictions of doctors, nurses, healthcare-related instruments and equipment, even toys. And I would then have to translate his sketches into a concrete line drawing in Adobe Illustrator. I had to continually massage the Illustrator image in order to find a balance between the image still maintaining the Justin Miller, designer character of the sketch, but also making sure that the clarity of the On what drew him to this project: One of the reasons why I decided image was getting its point across. to focus my career on health care design is because I feel that all of these instances are extremely serious, and an incredible amount On how his contributions to the project influenced his work as a of thought needs to be put intodesigning the spaces where these designer: As an animator, I was most interested in making sure that events occur. Helping all users of a health care facility feel less “cartoon” Wendy’s body language was matching with the way she anxious and feel that they have more control in such a chaotic was speaking to the viewer. To do this, I had to watch how people environment is one of the many guiding principles that we infuse moved their bodies as they spoke – we even created a video into every health care project. So it really resonated with me when recording of one of our team members while they read the script in Wendy and her family said they wanted to make an animated video order to capture these movements. We used Adobe After Effects as that would help reduce the stress of the children who are going our main scene- animating software, which was a bit of a learning through the Emergency Department. curve for me since I had never used the program before.

I was lucky enough to be an animator on this project, as well as I’ve never thought of myself as a talented sketch artist – so drawing a digitizer of hand-drawn sketches. One of our teammates was certain poses for cartoon Wendy definitely stretched my abilities as a an incredible sketch artist who produced drawings with great designer. My work on the project forced me to develop drawing skills, ABOVE & OPPOSITE: CHARACTER DESIGN AND ANIMATION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS - Courtesy of Payette

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Helping all users of a health care facility feel less anxious and feel that they have more control in such a chaotic environment.

and I’m extremely grateful for that. Interestingly enough, I think that drawing the various poses and gaining a better understanding for the proportions of the human body really helped me with my sense of scale on my other architectural projects.

Mike, Garrett, and Justin were three of our team’s core members, all of whom contributed countless hours to bringing Wendy’s story to life. ■

Our full team: Stuart Baur, Brian Carlic, Caitlin Cashner, Leon Drachman, Austin Ferguson, Gordon Grisinger, Dave Hamel, Garrett House, Alan Kawahara, Mike Lee, Parke MacDowell, Justin Miller, Erin Polansky, Scott Rawlings, Karen Robichaud, Dan Smith, Bob Schaeffner, Heather Taylor, Jamie Zhong, Jie Zhang.

We kept a Tumblr page to track our progress and inspiration. We also used this as a communication tool with the hospital and Family Advisory Council during the design process: https://payetteprojectw.tumblr.com/.

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IN REMEMBRANCE OF SHO-PING CHIN, FAIA

L’HÔPITAL DE ST. BONIFACE, MATERNITY WARD & NEONATAL CARE UNIT

BY KAREN ROBICHAUD

Karen Robichaud Robichaud is Director of Creative Engagement at Payette. She joined Payette in 2012 as a graphic designer and has since led several communications initiatives from the ground up for the firm. From the outset, Karen established Payette as a leader among other architecture firms with its social media strategy, leveraging many voices across the firm. Karen is a member of the AIA COTE Communications Task Force and a volunteer for Equity. She is an active member of the BSA and chairs its Equity Roundtable.

The maternity ward for St. Boniface Hospital, a project led by former Payette Principal Sho-Ping Chin, FAIA, is an addition to the only hospital in the southern peninsula of Haiti. Located in mountainous terrain 3.5 hours west of Port-au-Prince, the hospital serves a population of almost 12,000. Since it opened in 2015, the hospital has handled 2,000 inpatient cases, 42,000 emergency-room visits, and 5,000 births annually. The design strategy is quite simple: a garden pavilion that opens to a dramatic natural landscape. All the delivery rooms are fully enclosed, with circulation, lobbies, and waiting areas covered yet open to the ambient environment.

Utilizing local construction techniques and labor, the building is modern but reflects a “back to basics” perspective.

Sho-Ping, working closely with Ching-Hua Ho, an associate principal at Payette, led the firm’s efforts on this project, taking trips to Haiti to understand the site and local resources. In 2013, Sho-Ping wrote about a visit: “Spending the few days at Fond-desBlancs prior to embarking on design was vital. In addition to getting familiarized with the terrain, culture, and work habits, the eyeopener for me was the prevailing feeling of inaccessibility. Location, transportation, resources, technology infrastructure, and skill sets are some prime examples. Based on my initial observations, local sourcing has become such a cliché in the States, but in Haiti, it is almost the only alternative.”

Sho-Ping believed that great architecture can be achieved in each project regardless of program, scope, or mission, and in no place is this better demonstrated than her commitment to bringing stateof-the-art health care to Haiti. Tragically, Sho-Ping succumbed to cancer in 2015, not long after the new wing opened. In addition to the maternity ward and neonatal care unit, our team designed a mother’s garden for the patients and their families, meant to meet their psychological and physical needs.

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Timothy Cooke, an emerging architect now with LEVER in Portland, Ore., contributed to the garden’s design. “I was excited about working on a project that would have such a strong positive influence on the local community of Fond-des-Blancs. I was impressed by the mission of the hospital and its ability to serve such a large community. Additionally, working on the project gave me a greater appreciation of the value of connecting indoor and outdoor space. I learned that simple design elements can have a big impact on a user's experience of a project.”

Though our work on the maternity ward has concluded, we stayed in touch with St. Boniface Hospital and most recently heard from Dr. Inobert Pierre, the director general of operations: “The St. Boniface maternal and neonatal health center is a beacon of hope for thousands of women and babies in the southern peninsula, the center of compassionate and loving health care for the most vulnerable." It is our sincere hope that this project continues to have a lasting impact for its community.

To honor Sho-Ping’s memory and her deep commitment to the advancement of women in the profession, Payette initiated the Payette Sho-Ping Chin Memorial Academic Scholarship through the AIA to assist and honor female architecture students. It is the first AIA scholarship named after a female architect exclusively for a woman pursuing a career in architecture. Applications open in the fall. ■

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The St. Boniface maternal and neonatal health center is a beacon of hope for thousands of women and babies in the southern peninsula.

ABOVE: THE MATERNITY WARD FOR ST. BONIFACE HOSPITAL IN HAITI, A PROJECT LED BY FORMER PAYETTE PRINCIPAL SHO-PING CHIN, FAIA - Courtesy of Payette

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SERVICE THROUGH PRACTICE

AN INTERVIEW WITH KYLE RENDALL, AIA

BY YU-NGOK LO

Kyle Rendall, AIA is an architect at KSS Architectcs. He manages projects in all stages of design and construction within the PreK-12 market team. Rendall has past experience volunteering for Habitat for Humanity in Trenton and Newark, as well as being an ACE mentor in Newark. He has also procured and carried-out several pro bono projects on his personal time with great success, which has greatly added to his architectural experience. Additionally, Rendall ls Deputy Fire Chief of the Princeton Fire Department, which is a great passion of his.

In 2015, Kyle Rendall was recognized with the AIA New Jersey Young Architect of the Year Award. The announcement specifically noted his commitment to community service, including pro bono work. Despite his busy schedule as an architect with KSS, he is a volunteer firefighter and heavily involved with Womanspace Inc. Our CONNECTION team reached out to Kyle to find out more about his passion for serving his community.

YL: You have been involved with many pre-K to K-12 markets with school-district clients. Why is this type of work important to you and to the local communities?

Kyle Rendall (KR): KSS has been instrumental in the design of a significant base of community-based projects in our area, particularly K-12 schools that range from small fit-outs within existing buildings to entire school campuses with multiple facilities.

Clients have ranged from long-established public school districts to brand-new charter schools, located within urban centers or in rural suburbs. Through working on such a variety of projects within this market, it has become evident that the primary goal transcends the individual project – to provide safe, resilient spaces that foster the education of our nation’s future leaders, all within a responsible budget.

To me, K-12 projects are some of the most important and rewarding projects that we have the opportunity to design. They spark palpable excitement in their communities and build new educational opportunities for children. We have also seen new or renovated schools leading to development of surrounding properties to support the growth and vibrancy of a neighborhood, magnifying the impact of our work.

YL: Can you describe your pro bono design services with Womanspace?

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KR: Several years ago, I was approached by Womanspace to support the design of their administrative headquarters following my involvement at their annual fundraising events. Working through KSS, I was able to offer my services to them on a pro bono basis, including working with them from property acquisition through occupancy. I provided full construction documentation, limited construction-administration services, and general oversight over the project. We renovated an existing 6,000-square-foot, two-story office building, completely removing interior partitions and finishes, rearranging the existing structural system, and fitting out both floors, along with replacing the exterior window assemblies and cladding.

I remain involved with the organization through participation on the Advisory Board – these meetings are held in the conference room we designed together. It was a truly humbling experience to be able to support such a great organization and to continue to experience the building as a user to this day.

YL: You are a volunteer firefighter for the Princeton Fire Department.

Tell us a little bit about that.

KR: I presently serve as deputy fire chief for the Princeton Fire Department and also as a firefighter near my home in Montgomery Township, N.J. I am tasked with a variety of responsibilities, ranging from commanding and operating at fire incidents to managing budget negotiations and purchasing with local officials. I grew up familiar with the fire service through the involvement of several of my family members, which left a great impression of the importance of community on me. Not only do members of the department come together as one to serve the residents of the town, but also, through their outreach, they foster a sense of place and pride in the local community. This comes full circle as these actions influence new community members to get involved, sustaining these valuable local organizations.

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Inversely, my volunteer experiences as a firefighter strongly influence how I practice.

My experience as an architect greatly informs my involvement in the fire service – I assist in site-plan reviews and pre-planning walkthroughs of new construction in town. My architecture background provides me with intrinsic knowledge for our efforts at structuralcollapse incidents, as well as predicting fire behavior throughout buildings of various construction types. Inversely, my experiences as a firefighter strongly influence how I practice. We want to make buildings safer for our occupants for daily use, as well as for those entering the building under extreme conditions to search for and rescue those same occupants. In finding a balance between the aesthetic and functional elements of the structures, our design addresses its greatest challenges.

YL: Does your firm support your volunteer work outside of your paid duty? If yes, how do they help?

KR: Fortunately, my role with KSS is primarily performing construction administration on our projects, which provides me a great amount of flexibility in my schedule. Project meetings take precedence over my schedule for the week, with supplemental site visits, phone calls, email, submittal, and RFI review falling into place as needed. My involvement with the Fire Department occurs mostly during the evenings and weekends, with a couple meetings, events, or training sessions each week. There are a few events that occur during work hours every once in a while, but at the end of the day, I ensure my work-related tasks are achieved to the highest standards. Beyond that, neither of these aspects of my life are predictable nor consistent. Every day brings with it new and diverse challenges.

KR: I absolutely love both of these aspects of my life in addition to my personal pursuits, so to that point, the balance achieves itself naturally. There is a significant amount of burnout in the architecture industry, with much turnover of employees. I see this as a result of the late hours employees are working, producing documentation deadline by deadline with few rewards. But by immersing staff into the field on a consistent basis, encouraging ongoing cross-disciplinary learning opportunities, taking a part in construction administration, working on pro bono projects, and pursuing volunteer opportunities, KSS has developed more wellrounded employees and a supportive workplace culture.

YL: Anything you would like to add?

KR: I see a central challenge for our profession in engaging younger people in architecture. Firms need to encourage and foster the development of our younger staff and encourage involvement in firm operations through practice and design groups. Give them field experience so they can fully understand the implications of the lines they are putting down on paper and interact with the subcontractors assembling the details that they created. Promote involvement with local organizations to enrich their abilities outside of our field. The experiences, contacts, and knowledge they will bring back will prove to better each organization and the practice as a whole. â–

YL: Between your day job and your volunteer work, how do you achieve a healthy work balance?

ABOVE: BY DESIGNING AND CONSTRUCTING A SPACE FOR PARKING DAY IN PHILADELPHIA AND BEING INVOLVED IN SIMILAR CREATIVE PROJECTS, KSS ARCHITECTS EMPOWERS YOUNG DESIGNERS TO ENGAGE THEIR COMMUNITIES THROUGH DESIGN Courtesy of KSS Architects

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A JOURNEY TO BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

BY CARLA AMAYA

Carla Amaya, Assoc. AIA is an architectural designer at MV+A Architects in Washington, D.C. She received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

I remember the soft caress of the wind as I waited alongside the narrow, barely paved road that sat across from the land I had left my mark on. I don’t mean mark with undertones of selfishness.

There was no self-worship or greed present. I say it with the utmost respect. My mark in the sense that I have left a piece of me where it meant the most – in the land of my ancestors whom I have crossed paths with despite a gap in time. I see the bus coming from the distance, grab my bags, toss them to the older man assigned to help passengers aboard, and hop on the bus while it only slightly slows down to stop for me. I look back at the entrance doors where a simple sign reads Organizmo. All I can think as I stare at the mountains distancing themselves from me is gracias.

It was sometime in January of 2016 when I got word from a friend that Catholic University – my alma mater – was hosting a build trip in Bogota, Colombia, for the summer. I had heard of the class organized around this trip called “Spirit of Place.” It is a two-part course – the design portion in the spring and build portion in the summer – that enrolls a handful of students and is led by a wellknown D.C. architect by the name of Travis Price. Although I had always yearned to take the course while attending Catholic University, my schedule never seemed to align. I remembered during my time there that Travis always welcomed volunteers for the build portion and, consequently, I had long planned a trip to Colombia that same year.

Come July, I was prepared for a nice two-week vacation from work and a trip to the home country of my mother. I had a few days prior to the crew’s meeting date to explore, and I managed to wander south to Cali, my mother’s birthplace, then north to Bogota, the capital.

When I reached Bogota to meet the team later that week, I was surprised to learn that a few of my friends had chosen to attend. We all caught up and rode a giant bus to Tabio, a small town

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about an hour north of the city. We reached Tabio pretty late that night and were expected to be up at 8 the next morning.

It was hard to make anything of the land at night. It was so dark, you could hardly see your next step. On the flip side, the stars shone the brightest I had ever seen. I woke up early, eager to catch a glimpse of the farm. I was in complete shock at what I was seeing! First, the land was a vast area of diverse plants and a variety of structures.

Each building had been a project from previous students looking to learn about the biodiversity or indigenous building methods that Organizmo provided. Then I formally met the owner of this farm, a native Bogotana briefly turned New Yorker (by way of Parsons Design School), Ana Maria Gutierrez. After one conversation with her, you instantly realize where the magic of this place was born.

I saw so much passion in her eyes as she described preserving her inherited land as a safe space for the indigenous peoples of Colombia while keeping it internationally accessible as a hub for other cultures to fulfill their curiosity.

Later that morning, we began to build. From 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., our group worked diligently, with a one-hour lunch break that would put anyone off vegetarianism. This was the routine for about 12 days, except the one day we got to visit the tribe we were building for.

Ana has connections with the Muiscas, and our design was built around them. The proposed project was to be constructed on Ana’s plot of land as a sacred space for the tribe to hold spiritual rituals, graduations, or any other kind of celebration.

The design was meant to be a simple structure camouflaged into the field. Placement of materiality and shape of the structure was crucial in our representation of ancestral beliefs, myths, and use of cosmos in their culture. To best look at the oval design, we can break it down from the farthest edge in.

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I think everyone there that day learned a lot from our experience. The way we viewed our deteriorating land, how we handle difference, and maybe even growing an ounce of faith in someone or something bigger than us all.

Along the edge of the site, we began by pebbling a sidewalk surface while integrating a 1-foot reveal to allow ponding of water on the north and south sides. This was at the end of a sloping mound that would pile 5 feet high covering a majority of the bricks laid for the interior. The water we hoped would gather on the protective edges represented Lake Guatavita. This lake was approximately 50 kilometers south of our site and is believed to be the point on Earth where life is introduced to death. It is a sacred site that represents the harmonious balance of the past and present. The Muisca people would regularly visit this lake to plunge gold into it as an offering to the gods. You may also have heard of this lake as the grounds from the myth of El Dorado.

The surrounding mounds past the pebbles physically create the illusion of submergence – alluding to the great depths of Lake Guatavita. The class and I found that the Muiscas also “submerged” themselves in their faith in the land by assigning a deity for each earthly element.

way for worship spaces. The entrances and exits must always align with the sun and moon, or, if you prefer, Sué and Chía. Finally, at the epicenter of the site, a custom fire pit was constructed to give the space light. Fires are a central piece to all sacred rituals.

They create warmth, symbolize gathering, and allow for smoking ceremonies.

The final day of my stay and the stressful completion of the project was the happiest. The Muisca tribe was finally introduced to their newest temple. They welcomed us with open arms to a spiritual ceremony and celebratory roast. I saw the complexity of their faith ... the beauty of their stubborn beliefs that broke them from modern society. I think everyone there that day learned a lot from our experience. The way we viewed our deteriorating land, how we handle difference, and maybe even growing an ounce of faith in someone or something bigger than us all. We all were filled to the brim with joy as we saw their smiles and gratitude that day. The feeling was mutual, as all I could think was gracias. ■

Along with creating these high walls of dirt, we flooded them with medicinal grasses used frequently in worship. This also helped mask the site as one with its surroundings and reduce the appearance of it as a man-made scar. We took the environment seriously in the project and managed to do as little harm to it as possible.

The interior was an intimate space, built brick by brick. The steel columns supported a tiered copper roof that protects the Muiscas’ heads from the almost daily drizzle that falls on the site’s high elevation. The copper has since developed a patina and gives the structure another element of interest. Below it, the bricks that were made on site prior to the group’s arrival were staggered and topped with slated stone for seating. Finally, the floor was pebbled through the east and west entrances. Their orientation was an integral part of this project because the Muiscas believe that this is the only

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NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY PUBLIC INTEREST ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM AN INTERVIEW WITH GEORGIA BIZIOS, FAIA

BY IAN MERKER

GEORGIA BIZIOS, FAIA taught architecture at NC State University for thirty years and at Tulane University for twelve years.

Professor Bizios’ teaching and research interests include architectural design, site and sustainability issues, user involvement in design, theories of placemaking, and principles of architectural design. She has served as Associate Dean at NC State and Tulane.

ACSA/AIA Practice and Leadership Award for paid internships working with nonprofits Georgia Bizios, FAIA, taught architecture at N.C. State University for 30 years and at Tulane University for 12. Her teaching and research interests include architectural design, site and sustainability issues, user involvement in design, theories of place-making, and principles of architectural design.

She has also served as an associate dean at N.C. State and Tulane.

In 2004, Bizios established the Home Environments Design Initiative (HEDI) at N.C. State’s College of Design. Its mission is to initiate, facilitate, and coordinate scholarship, research, and outreach services in the area of quality design for home environments. Since that time, HEDI has partnered with many affordable-housing providers in North Carolina and has received several awards for service to our communities. The Public Architecture Program at N.C. State was a successor of HEDI and earned her the 2015-2016 ACSA/AIA Practice and Leadership Award.

Bizios has practiced as a consultant to architectural firms and individual clients since 1976. Her professional experience encompasses residential, commercial, and planning projects. In 1990, she established her firm, Bizios Architect, with a focus on residential architecture. She works closely with clients to define and assess their needs, budgets, and sites and design their homes. Bizios retired from teaching in July 2016, and others are continuing variations of the Public Architecture Program.

IM: What is your definition of design in the public interest?

Georgia Bizios (GB): The way we defined it in the program is based on the conviction that everybody needs and deserves good design, and also thinking that architects can design not only for clients that are paying architectural fees, but get paid for work that

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benefits the public. I am convinced that good design affects human life, and we, as architects, can provide good design and find ways to get paid for those designs. The design of a better home, school, or public space benefits all, rather than only a client who has the ability to pay for our services. There are ways to get small amounts of funds to pay students to do work within an academic setting.

IM: In an academic environment, how does that mindset translate to teaching that architects should be getting paid and working in the public interest?

GB: In 2004, I started the Home Environments Design Initiative, and students were involved, either for credit or for pay as research assistants or summer assistants doing preliminary design work or site analysis for nonprofits. The students were paid from grants that I solicited from outside and within the university. There were also some small funds from the nonprofits themselves.

Our work focused mainly on the preliminary stages and created work for architects. For example, when a nonprofit board knows they need a new facility but they have not defined their need, we involve students to do a charrette with stakeholders or do a site analysis for a site that the nonprofit is considering and present with wonderful models and 3D ideas to the board to help them clarify their vision and commit to proceeding.

IM: How can a research student, in a finite period of time, offer services to a longer-term project?

GB: We made it clear to the nonprofits from the beginning that the work of the students was not replacing architectural services. We made sure that the expectations were matching to our capacity.

IM: In 2011, with Katie Wakeford, you published a series of essays on public-interest architectural internships called “Bridging the Gap.” Is the book used as an instructional aid for the course, setting students up for a career in humanitarian service?

GB: Yes, but I am convinced that not everybody will do this as a career. My conviction is that when universities create a climate of social responsibility, people have an opportunity to have the experience; some of them may continue or come back to it. In all cases, they understand it as part of the responsibility of the profession and are supportive in many ways. The 1-percent idea – where corporate offices take on public-interest assignments – exists, and those who have public-interest design experience continue to do such work.

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Architects can design not only for clients that are paying architectural fees, but get paid for work that benefits the public.

ABOVE: HANGING ROCKS CABIN BY ARSALAN ABBASL AND RACHEL STEINSBERGER WAS A FUNDED INTERNSHIP PROJECT IN BIZIOS' PUBLIC INTEREST ARCHITECTURE STUDIO -

Courtesy of Georgia Bizios

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IM: Was success of the program dependent on NCARB allowing experience credit concurrent with education?

GB: When the rules changed at NCARB to allow work experience concurrent with academic credit, I saw that as a wonderful step forward for our students. One of the commitments of the program is to establish an NCARB record. The rules change strengthened the program. We provided internships where students were in the studio and were paired with local offices. The students got credit, got paid, and got experience. Nonprofits were excited about the program and got benefits from the student work. Local architectural offices were very supportive – firms contributed money. I hate the expression “win-win,” but it was good for everybody all around.

because I helped to document 12 to 16 hours per week of mentorship per student. For these programs to be successful, it helps to have a registered architect on faculty. In the case of internships with our community partners, which are nonprofit organizations, they don’t have architects on staff, so I was the supervisor.

IM: How was the program able to continue after the initial funding for paid internships was used?

IM: Did that work provide hours to NCARB Experience Setting A (for Practice of Architecture)?

GB: Funds were received from stakeholders – and the university extension grant as seed money – then the offices added to the kitty. The challenge that faculty have is that by the time you have the money, you have to make a commitment to the teaching assignments you have. Once the students are lined up with firm internships, the firms begin to replenish the funding. However, eventually the program will need to be replenished with larger grants. I also asked for funding from firms because I wanted to have offices with full commitment to the program. While networking among local firms is great, when they have money invested, it’s a different story. They become stakeholders in the program.

GB: They were doing “Setting O” for a university. I did the NCARB supervising as a registered architect, which was good for the offices

A seminar in public-interest architecture was a co-requisite that gave us a certain leeway for how to organize the studio, lectures,

We created a synergy where students were involved in studies and could gain positive work experience, where they could make visits to construction sites or walk sites to take notes of meetings.

ABOVE & OPPOSITE: THE PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM IS ENHANCED BY COLLABORATIONS WITH COMMUNITY PARTNERS AND LOCAL ARCHITECTURE OFFICES - Courtesy of Georgia Bizios

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When universities create a climate of social responsibility, people have an opportunity to have the experience.

IM: Have graduates moved on into specific fields related to the course?

GB: One of them became a Rose fellow with an affordablehousing provider in Asheville and, after the fellowship, stayed on as a developer. In other programs, for those who have a very good master’s degree and have never stepped foot in an architectural office, it’s very hard to get that first job. With the programs we did at N.C. State, many of the students were hired directly in the offices where they did their internships.

IM: What is the role of N.C. State in continuing public-interest work?

visitors, and field trips. The seminar gave us access to the students for a certain time to schedule office visits and other things.

GB: N.C. State has a long and proud tradition in community involvement. As a land-grant university, the colleges have as part of their mission to be involved in the community and apply research as a service component. For example, Bryan Bell, who founded Design Corps, was hired as a full-time faculty member.

He continues variations of the Public Interest Architecture Program work. So as faculty changes, so will the way they focus the work.

The establishment of the Public Interest Program will continue to influence the future of the university. It has the support of the dean and provost and professional community. There are good, committed offices that want interns. â–

IM: In the ACSA award submission, examples of some of the community partners included Self- Help Community Development Corporation, Community Alternatives for Supportive Abodes (CASA), The Jackson Center at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Economic Development Commission (EDC) of Stokes County, N.C. In those cases, students are not interning within a design firm, but you were operating as the lead architect. Was that an effective relationship?

GB: The community thinks the students hold up the world and are excited to see the beautiful work of the students. Self Help gave money to the university for the program. Self-Help had an established internship program to begin with. They are an amazing success story, a very organized program with many interns every summer in fields like economics and social work. When the architecture students came in, they participated in that. There were also instances where the architecture students were directly involved in design projects where I supervised.

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SOWING THE SEEDS FOR SUCCESS, WORKING FROM THE HEART PRO BONO PROACTIVE-REACTIVE

BY ILLYA AZAROFF

ILLYA AZAROFF, AIA is principal of +LAB Architect PLLC & Associate Professor at NYCCT (CUNY). An architect with over 25 years experience, he is a recognized expert in resilient building measures, often working on the Federal Disaster Recovery Framework and New York City Office of Recovery & Resilience. In 2014 Azaroff received the AIANYS Presidents Citation and the AIA National Young Architects Award. He serves on the AIA National Strategic Council through 2018.

Substance and gravity. Seeking substance in all we do to address the gravity of the challenges we face is on the minds of the emerging professional. As we move forward from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, many architects feel a call to action or a pull to help however they can. The reaction is normal as a human being and as an architect who is dedicated to the health, safety, and welfare of the public. We are seeking substance in our actions and recognize the gravity of the unfolding tragedies. Many are asking how to be part of the solution in this case: Am I a volunteer? Do I offer my services pro bono?

What business sense can I make for working in such a manner that does not devalue my office or the profession in the marketplace?

All excellent questions that we wrestle with throughout our careers, even when we are engaged with professional societies such as the AIA. A balance of contributing time versus work is a constant debate. Does being proactive and engaged mean pro bono?

The case for working as a professional in a pro bono capacity occurs often and may be found necessary from time to time.

Opportunities frequently arise for working with those who cannot afford your services, a not-for-profit or communities in need, and it's not limited to those instances.

It calls into question whether entering an architecture competition equates to pro bono work. In many ways, it does. Competitions involve extreme effort, a chance for recognition, a potential prize, a portfolio builder, and possibly a building project. These possibilities make competitions attractive. At the same time, we must recognize the number of unpaid hours that flow into competition processes.

Is that pro bono? Not really, but the same can be said when an architect engages in true pro bono work or social-impact design, ranging from possible recognition, portfolio builder, possibility of future projects, and something more. Substance and gravity.

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To be sure, after a disaster, it is part of our ethical charge, as members of the AIA, to help people and communities recover.

Working in those circumstances, we are reacting and ethically bound to act. Taking the volunteer efforts one step further, my office, +LAB, works with several organizations following disasters.

One is the Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance.

The group has had impacts all around the world. It stepped in after Sandy in New York and New Jersey, helped contain disease outbreaks in Africa, supported hundreds of schools as they got back up and running after devastating earthquakes in Nepal, and assisted with energy networks in the Caribbean after Hurricanes Maria and Irma. Those are just a few of the many areas of engagement where thought leaders convened to build a better world. Identifying fragile systems with a broad array of volunteers from around the world is, in itself, satisfying as a high-impact pro bono act that results in the “something else:” substance and gravity.

Aside from sleeping well at night with a clear conscience, what does work of this nature give you, your office, and your business?

We need to recognize that the youngest generations entering the profession are seeking collective meaning to their work, and if it is not there, another path or profession may be in their cards.

Transformation is all around us, and a proactive stance to being part of the solution echoes through younger generations. The “something else” bridges and gives purpose across generations of professionals while lending credence to the upcoming generations who redefine value to volunteer work.

The mechanics.

Traditionally, engaging in pro bono activities is often seen as a double-edged sword. However, it's important to understand the value of pro bono work, whether in this context or in the others described above. Many offices engage in pro bono work to gain experience or activate emerging professionals so they can gain expertise that they want to market later on.

Let's take, for example, working with a not-for-profit organization or community group that cannot normally afford an architect. This allows for the work to not only have justification and impact, but it can leverage the office’s position in the community with profitable ventures for years to come. My studio has done this type of work on many occasions, most recently with a synagogue and a rooftopplayground feasibility study, which has fueled several projects not only with the congregation, but with the community. Working for

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Transformation is all around us, and a proactive stance to being part of the solution echoes through younger generations. not-for-profits places you in the public eye.

Pursue your passion.

We have a passion for art in the street and engage in similarly open strategies with many art-based groups, organizations, and community groups. We have designed, built, and implemented several temporary installations to call attention to community advocacy or reinforce community-based events and draw large crowds. The initial impact of the crowd is the attention for the cause, but the long-term effects are our office’s lasting image and connectivity with that neighborhood and potential projects. Business owners and like-minded community leaders often recommend the office for work based on our goodwill, creativity, and willingness to support the community with our time and intellectual property.

Many examples in this realm have built a studio culture of engagement, openness, and ideas that lead to a better future.

Two really good ones are at Public School 9 in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The school didn’t have a library, and its playground flooded the lower portions of the school during heavy rain. Needless to say, the playground was in disrepair and had very little functional use for kindergarten through fifth grade. Our office convened two workshops. One was community-based and brought in many architects, as the Foundation for Architecture organized a day of working with teachers and students to imagine a space the kids wanted.

including interior designers, created the final vision of the space based on the students’ work. The pro bono activity of interior designer Kiki Dennis continues to contribute to the success of her own practice.

In the end, identifying proactive, community-driven efforts benefits architects and connects with emerging professionals while building identity and trust in your own practice. A reactive approach to postdisaster events can have similar effects: sleeping well at night.

Finding balance between worthwhile causes and maintaining the profitability of your studio is a constant struggle. It's easy to get caught up in pro bono work and lose focus on the value of your practice. However, if you take an alternate approach to “value,” the loyalty of co-workers and your community cannot be overestimated.

Our work with public art installations and community events has led to professional work with museums such as MoMA, the Austrian Cultural Forum, performance spaces and theaters around the world, and a multitude of startup not-for-profits. Our work in the realm of resilience has us collaborating at some of the highest levels of government around the globe, with some of the most accomplished, passionate professionals in their fields. Pro bono is proactive equity development, and the substance of our work is equal to the gravity of the problems of the 21st century. ■

The activities were attended by over 300 families and attracted the Brooklyn borough president’s office, legislators, and public officials.

In the end, the city donated over $40,000 to the cause, triggering parent involvement in grant writing. Several of the children's ideas became part of the design thrust for the playground. A new playground was built within two years of the public workshop using public and private funds.

For the second piece, the library engaged students from the New York City College of Technology. A design charrette was organized, with examples from the Robin Hood Foundation used to envision a new library from leftover space.

Parents became excited, and the Department of Education attended the final presentations, noting the value this would have for the school. With the government behind the effort, the school and families raised funds to move the project into reality.

Several parents of the students working in the AEC industry,

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FEATURE | HUMANITARIAN WORK AND COMMUNITY PLANNING

DIÉBÉDO FRANCIS KÉRÉ THE GANDO PROJECT

BY VIKKI LEW

DIÉBÉDO FRANCIS KÉRÉ, Hon. FAIA is a German-trained architect from the West African town of Gando, Burkina Faso. His first building,a primary school in Gando, was completed in 2001 and received the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In 2005, he founded Kéré Architecture to reinvest in his Burkina Faso community and beyond. Kéré has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and the Swiss Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, and his work has earned numerous awards, including the Curry Stone Design Prize, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, the BSI SwissArchitectural Award, and the Marcus Prize.

At A’17 in Orlando this year, AIA members were mesmerized to see Diébédo Francis Kéré, Hon. FAIA, in the keynote series Anticipate Need: Design That Cares. Kéré is a native of Gando, a village in Burkina Faso’s Centre-Est Region, about 200 kilometers from Ouagadougou. Gando has a population of approximately 2,500 residents. Only about 15 percent of the country is electrified. In his public presentations, Kéré often described the village as having no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no paved roads, and no running water. The economy relies on agriculture and foreign aid.

Children often are sent to work in the field, and education is rare.

According to data from UNESCO, the literacy rate of 15- to 24year-olds in the country is 46 percent for males and 33 percent for females. Compounding the challenge, children often have to work to support the community. 1,4

As a child of the village chief, Kéré had the opportunity to attend school in the city Tenkodogo, 13 kilometers away, where he stayed with relatives. When he finished grammar school, he began an apprentice as a carpenter and, four years later, received a scholarship to study carpentry in Germany. From there, he went on to study architecture at the Berlin Technical University. With this remarkable path, Kéré was the first person from his village to learn reading and writing, designing, and a bit of engineering.

He was convinced that education is the way out of poverty. While still in Germany, he sent money back to Gando for repairs to the small primary school, which was built after he left but already in despair. He soon realized he should use his knowledge to build the school himself. 1-8 Gando Primary School Although there are concrete buildings in Burkina Faso, wood is not commonly available. For his first project, Kéré chose mud clay as the primary material because of its abundance but with improved technique instead of the usual mud buildings that slump in the rain. The traditional methods were modified to create a more structurally viable material. Bricks are economically feasible, can be produced with local methods, and provide thermal insulation.

Kéré named the foundation Schulbausteine für Gando, literally translated as Bricks for the Gando School. In addition, he secured support from LOCOMAT, a government agency, to train brick to work with compressed stabilized earth. In sum, he designed, built, and raised funds for the primary school as his first project while still a student himself.

To protect the clay-brick walls from rain, a tin roof supported by a steel-rod space frame hangs over the classroom. Cool air passes through this interstitial space and provides a buffer for the heated

ABOVE: GANDO SECONDARY SCHOOL - Ventilation space between two roofs. - Photo by Kéré Architecture

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ACROSS: GANDO PRIMARY SCHOOL, from top to bottom: Exterior view, south elevation - Photo by Simeon Duchoud Classroom with steel lamella windows - Photo by Simeon Duchoud BOTTOM: CHILDREN ON TERRACE - Photo by Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

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I don't need to explain to you how great a privilege it is for me to be standing before you today. But what to do with this privilege? roof. Ceiling of the classroom is made of perforated clay, providing ventilation by releasing hot air out into the interstitial space and draws in cool air to the classroom from the window, naturally cooling the classrooms. The space under the tin roof allows air to pass through and naturally cools the inside the classrooms. The construction was feasible with training and limited tools.

This passive strategy resolves a common problem in Burkina Faso, where houses are typically built with roofs of corrugated metal, further heating the insides. Temperatures peak above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest months, between February and May. They reach 90 or above the rest of the year. The indoor temperature of the primary school, however, is 6 degrees lower than outdoors. The school serves not only the education needs of Gando, but also the surrounding area. 11 Gando Secondary School Following the success of the primary school and its extension, the need for more education and a secondary school became apparent. The secondary school includes classrooms, administrative offices, assembly halls, sports fields, and sheltered bicycle and motorbike parking. These facilities are arranged in seven buildings around a courtyard. The 12 classroom modules are divided into clusters of two or three in each building. Besides education, the secondary school serves the community’s need for gathering space, presentations, and performances. As in the primary school, a double-skinned roof was developed to reduce heat gain and to shield against rain. Though similar materials were

used, the building took on a different architectural expression.

The roof modules and the clay-brick ceilings are vaulted and perforated at the apex for natural ventilation and diffused daytime lighting. Gando Secondary School serves about 1,000 students from Gando and nearby villages. 12 Gando Teacher Housing As the school expanded, more facilities were necessary to support the growth of the education system in Gando. First was the teachers’ housing, which attracted more to the area. There are six units, arranged in a curvilinear layout on the south side of the complex. The foundations are made of cast in-situ cement and granite stones, the walls of banco blocks, 40-centimeterthick mud bricks. Concrete tie beams connect the walls at the top and support the barrel-vault roofs, which come in two sizes.

The bigger vaults are 150 centimeters in diameter, the smaller 100 centimeters. Reinforced concrete was poured in situ into vaults of adobe bricks. The vaults were covered with bituminized plaster to protect against rain. An over-roof made of corrugated metal sheets, hovering slightly above the concrete vaults provides further protection from rain. The two vault sizes leave a sickleshaped aperture for ventilation and daylight. The end walls are adorned with perforated brick windows, which draw in cooler air. Buttresses runs on the side of the adobe walls and channel rainwater to the ground. 13 Gando School Library A more recent expansion of the compound was the Gando School Library, a free-standing structure that serves not only the school, but the public. Walls of the oval-shaped reading room were made of 30-milimeter-thick compressed-earth bricks. Its roof made use of clay pots to create openings for ventilation and diffused light.

Women from the village brought the pots to the site, where adults and children helped prepare them for construction. The pots were cut at top and bottom, resulting in rings that were embedded into the concrete ceiling of the reading room.

The openings provide a rhythmic pattern of light circles on the floor, along with natural ventilation and cooling. A curved brick wall further subdivides the space into a public reading room and a smaller, more intimate private one. An overhanging metal roof supported on metal trusses keeps out the rain. Eucalyptus trunks, typically used for firewood, are employed on the façade of the long elevations to provide a shaded semi-outdoor space. 14-16

ABOVE: GANDO PRIMARY SCHOOL EXTENSION - Colorful steel lamella windows facilitate natural ventilation of the classrooms - Photo by Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

ACROSS, TOP & CENTER: GANDO SECONDARY SCHOOL - Construction of the double-skinned roof. The lower layer is the barrel vault roofs of the classrooms. The mono-pitched metal roof is held up by a space frame. - Photo by Kéré Architecture ACROSS, BOTTOM: GANDO TEACHERS HOUSING - Rainwater conductors are integrated in the design to funnel water from the barrel vault roofs to the ground. - Photo by Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

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I believe it is important to engage people in the process of building so they have an investment in what is developed.

Privilege & Community To accomplish the construction of the school buildings, brickmakers and masons were trained in collaboration with Project LOCOMAT, an agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Housing, and Transportation that promotes improved building techniques with local materials. Women from local villages were involved in the gravel-tamping for the floor. Blacksmiths from Tenkodogo provided the doors and shutters. Space frames for the roofs were built on site, under supervision by the architect. Their metal sheeting also came from within Burkina Faso. About 150 volunteers contributed to the construction. Everyone involved in the building and management, including Kéré himself, is native to Gando. 2,7 Inspired by this successful model, two neighboring villages now have their own new schools, built entirely with their own labor and funded by community members living away from home. Since then, the fundraising association Bricks for Gando has evolved into the Kéré Foundation to provide access to education and support, with the goal of improving the lives of people in West Africa for the long term. Through the foundation, the innovative construction technologies Kéré developed in the projects are put to greater use as a model for the region. The foundation runs programs for women and for avoiding soil erosion, as well as making donations for classes. Supporters can donate for projects or tree planting. Major donors can fund key construction projects such as health centers, mothers' housing, or deep-water wells. 3

ABOVE: GANDO LIBRARY - Construction of the library roof entailed creative use of the clay pots - Photo by Kéré Architecture

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This year, Kéré became the first African architect to design for the Serpentine Pavilion. His entry centers on a large funnel roof – an abstraction of trees in Burkina Faso – that provides shelter from sun and rain. By drawing inspiration from his native country in this high-profile commission, the architect hopes to draw attention to climate change.18 In the ensuing interviews, Kéré continues to share his conviction and ask the crucial question: What to do with this privilege? ■

Reference 1. Kéré, Architecture. (n.d.). BIography. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://kere-architecture.com/about/ 2. Kéré, Architecture. (n.d.). Gando Primary School. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://www. kerearchitecture.com/projects/primary-school-gando/ 3. Kéré, Foundation. (2017). How we work. Retrieved at http://www.kere-foundation.com/en/ 4. Kéré, D.F. (2017). Anticipate Need: Design That Cares. The American Institute of Architects, A’17 Conference on Architecture, Day 1 Keynote. Orlando, Florida.

5. Lepik, A. (ed.), Beygo, A., Kéré, D.F. (2017). Radically Simple. Berlin: Hatje Cantz.

6. Kéré, D.F. (2013). How to build with clay… and community. TEDCity 2.0. Retrieved at https://www. ted.com/talks/diebedo_francis_kere_how_to_build_with_clay_and_community 7. Aga Khan Award for Architecture. (2004). 2002-2004 Cycle | Primary School. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://www.akdn.org/architecture/project/primary-school 8. Lepik, A. (2010). Primary School: Gando, 1999-2001, in Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 9. Mcknight, J.M. (2014). Bringing it All Back Home: Diébédo Francis Kéré’s Atelier Architectural Record. http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/5674-newsmaker-diébédo-francis-kéré 10. UNESCO (2013). Statistics: Burkina Faso. Retrieved Aug 2017 at https://www.unicef.org/ infobycountry/burkinafaso_statistics.html 11. Kéré Architecture. (2012). Gando Primary School Extension. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://kerearchitecture.com/projects/school-extension-gando/ 12. Kéré Architecture. (n.d.). Gando Secondary School. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://kerearchitecture.com/projects/secondary-school-gando/ 13. Kéré Architecture. (n.d.). Gando Teachers' Housing. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://www.kerearchitecture.com/projects/teachers-housing-gando/ 14. Kéré Architecture. (2012). In Progress_School Library Gando / Kéré Architecture. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://www.archdaily.com/262012/in-progress-school-library-gando-kere-architecture 15. Birch, A. (2011). Primary school library by Kéré Architects. Retrieved Aug 2017 at http://www. bdonline.co.uk/primary-school-library-by-kéré-architects/5029116.article 16. Kéré, Architecture. (2012). Diebedo Francis Kéré: public library in gando. Retrieved Aug 2017 at https://www.designboom.com/architecture/diebedo-francis-kere-public-library-in-gando/ 17. Markus, E. (2017). Serpentine Pavilion 2017, in Detail, July 2017, retrieved from https://www. detailonline.com/article/serpentine-pavilion-2017-by-francis-kere-30424/

OPPOSITE: GANDO LIBRARY - TOP TO BOTTOM: Women bringing claypots to site. - Photo by Kéré Architecture Light circles on reading room floor. - Photo by Kéré Architecture

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SERVICE THROUGH PRACTICE

DEVELOPING DESIGN ADVOCACY WITH THE NDSA

BY STEPHEN PARKER

Stephen Parker, AIA is an architect in the healthcare studio at SmithGroupJJR in Washington DC, with experience in institutional, commercial, learning and healthcare projects at all scales.

He currently serves as the National Advocacy Director for the AIA’s Young Architects Forum and Co-founder of the National Design Services Act Coalition.

For many aspiring architects of this rising generation, community design strikes a chord. It feeds a sense of self that we can design a better world than how we found it. While not exclusive to this generation or even this profession, it’s a growing sentiment. Given this spirit of service, this edition of YAF Connection is focused on pro bono design and the myriad monikers for such efforts – community, public-interest, or social-impact design are but a few – providing an opportunity to explore how the profession engages our communities. Given the advocacy efforts to move the NDSA forward, it seems fitting to explore how one will catalyze the other.

As the AIA strives to act on its collective values and move the needle on issues facing the profession – increasing public relevancy and empowering our communities – let’s see how practice is evolving to meet these challenges.

To provide some context, the NDSA is a bill on student loan payments that provides framework for current and aspiring architects to pay off their debt through community-design service.

Intended for those pursuing licensure, the opportunity to make payments through community work is an alternative enjoyed by other professions – doctors, lawyers, even veterinarians. This bill would give full- or part-time options for those with design skills at all levels of nonprofits and government agencies. One can imagine the wave of projects that could benefit from ample design talent and passionate professionals to move them forward. Imagine a community design center with an extra set of hands to finish a proposal or local planning office in need of drafting help or a nonprofit developing a community project. The spending generated by the combination of community-empowering projects and a rising generation of designers paying off their student loans faster can only strengthen the economy. Communities are also more resilient if there are committed designers embedded among their neighbors to rebuild and bounce back after a natural or man-made disaster.

Lastly, the impact on passionate, aspiring architects and the

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mark they can make upon society will allow us all to live up to our collective values as architects.

By demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between the profession’s broadening community- design approach and the NDSA’s proposed student loan repayment program, each idea can build upon the momentum of the other. When design solves problems facing society at large – greater than any one project or client – we all benefit.

While there are more traditional avenues for pro bono work by community design centers (CDCs), with the advent of the Open Architecture Collaborative (formerly Architecture for Humanity), a fresh grassroots effort has emerged. Those involved are individual architects and designers, some with firm support and some without.

With renewed interest, other organizations have emerged, such as Public Architecture, in which firms pledge staff hours to community projects. These and other organizations have provided a platform to better integrate pro bono work into practice. But for some firms, this is just a starting point.

At CannonDesign, the community-design approach is evolving into a firm-wide philosophy. “CannonDesign is embarking on a fiveyear strategic framework, and a key component is our advancing our practice’s social conscience,” says CEO Brad Lukanic, AIA. “Initiatives like our Open Hand Studio, an incubator for publicinterest design projects, or giving back through pro bono or reduced-fee design services are important to our firm. But we’re still challenging ourselves to expand our community engagement and connecting to organizations in need.” This is but one example of a large firm connecting with nonprofits to empower communities.

Given that the majority of firms and the architects they employ are in small-firm settings, their approach can be more nimble and innovative. In the case of Inscape Studio in Washington, D.C., it

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Communities are also more resilient if there are committed designers embedded among their neighbors to rebuild and bounce back after a natural or man-made disaste.

ABOVE, TOP: NATIONAL DESIGN SERVICES ACT (NDSA) ON SOCIAL MEDIA - Courtesy of NDSA Coalition ABOVE, LEFT: D.C. BUILDING INDUSRY ASSOCIATION (DCBIA) - represents architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate firms in the Washington, D.C., area. - Courtesy of DCBIA ABOVE RIGHT: THE OPEN HAND STUDIO AT CANNON DESIGN REPRESENTS A FIRM-WIDE COMMITMENT TO SOCIALLY CONSICOUS DESIGN - Courtesy of CannonDesign

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is integral to their mission. “It’s always been in our DNA. We were thinking a broader impact for design,” says Inscape Studio’s Greg Kearley. “It began in earnest once I got involved with the Washington Architectural Foundation, which matches firms to nonprofits. When we launched Inscape Publico, we found our niche by supporting the first 20 percent of the project in schematic design, developing the design and graphics needed by the nonprofits to raise the rest of the capital for their project.” This can spur untapped economic activity in the process, and to date, Inscape Publico has helped generate over $20 million in built work. The nonprofit provides an initial design fee as “skin in the game,” and once the project is fully funded, it creates a business opportunity for Inscape Studio.

Though they are under no obligation to do so, if the organization decides to move forward with Inscape Studio, the firm takes the design to completion. As a business strategy, doing good can be good for the bottom line as well.

Beyond traditional community design centers and individual firms, some organizations engage in community design as an annual or one-off event to catalyze their members and resources into a focused effort. For nonprofits and associations with a small area of operation, a built project can be a catalyst for relationship building.

While it may be only a small part of their overall programming, a community-design project can support larger efforts and serve as a

compelling tool in any nonprofit’s toolbox to make lasting and meaningful change.

One organization doing just that is the DC Building Industry Association (DCBIA). The consortium represents architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate firms in the Washington, D.C., area. This membership organization has developed a remarkable community design-build program over the last 25 years.

Branded as Community Improvement Day, this one-day build takes a site in D.C. – a recreation field, park, community center, or even the city’s largest urban farm – and deploys up to 1,000 volunteers to build. For the UDC Urban Farm, over a dozen local, state, and federal agencies pitched in technical expertise, materials, and manpower in a dizzying display of coordinated chaos. Preceded by months of design and community-engagement meetings, a team of architecture firms took on different zones across the site and developed a holistic vision. For a community-design team, such as the one at SmithGroupJJR’s D.C. office, the event provides an opportunity to give back to the community while bringing together staff, consultants, and clients in a positive way. It’s one of the more rewarding aspects of the DCBIA’s community programs.

"DCBIA architects and designers directly impact the lives of the D.C. community through Community Improvement Day," said Lisa Mallory, CEO of the DCBIA. “We sustain a very positive and

ABOVE: UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, URBAN FARM - Courtesy of SmithGroupJJR

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the event provides an opportunity to give back to the community while bringing together staff, consultants, and clients in a positive way. constructive relationship with residents, community stakeholders, and the owners of the site, returning to hold other supportive events and activities for three years now. This relationship building created such a dramatic and inspiring design.”

Like the DCBIA, AEC Cares and the GreenBuild Legacy project are annual events, but they roam the U.S. and provide a lasting impact for cities hosting their conferences. These conferencespecific events, while itinerant in nature, impart the values of the organizations involved, a lasting testament to the collaborative power of design. AEC Cares’ most recent project, in Orlando, brought together a wide range of architects, builders, suppliers, and consultants to pull off a stunning transformation that made the 2017 AIA Conference on Architecture all the more relevant. For Laura Barlow, the AEC Cares executive director, each year is an opportunity to up the ante.

“In April 2017, AEC Cares, together with about 120 volunteers and with the help of generous sponsors, completed a comprehensive renovation of the Women & Children’s Center at the Coalition for the Homeless/Orlando,” says Marlow. “With new paint, flooring, ceilings, wall cladding and furniture, we were able to give the center a huge facelift. None of this could be accomplished without the generous pro bono work of the design team. Architects and designers from DLR Group, Heery, HHCP, and HighMark, together

with significant help from Balfour Beatty Construction, did a great job of pulling it all together and creating a brighter, more welcoming facility for people who really need some help and encouragement.

I’ve never seen a profession so dedicated to helping those who need it most, and I’m extremely proud of what we did together in Orlando.” AEC Cares, since its inception in 2011, has strived to bring the architecture, engineering, and construction industries together and convey the values of the profession through service leadership.

While this is by no means a comprehensive review of how any one individual, firm, or organization is evolving the future of community design, it speaks to the ethos of the profession and the impact of architecture. The NDSA aims to catalyze this growing trend and address problems facing the profession in the process.

The inclusive nature of community projects – from engaging stakeholders to revitalizing blighted areas and empowering ordinary citizens to transform their neighborhoods – is an encouraging sign that architects are living up their collective values. The passionate drive of architects committed to elevating their communities through design raises the value proposition of the profession and can invigorate careers with meaning. It sets firms apart by designing for the betterment of society and strengthens local economies when neglected buildings and spaces are repurposed and revitalized.

In essence, if design feeds the body of the profession, design advocacy can feed its soul. ■ Never heard of the NDSA? H.R. 2938, the National Design Services Act of 2015 (NDSA), would enable recent architecture graduates to provide design and planning services for their communities in exchange for student debt repayment. This will contribute to the economic revitalization of underserved communities while relieving financial burdens on the next generation of architects and elevating the profession in the process.

ABOVE: AEC CARES - linking architecture and construction professionals - Courtesy of AEC Cares

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HUMANITARIAN DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

BY VIKKI LEW

Vikki Lew, AIA began her architectural career in San Francisco and started practicing internationally in 2006. Her diverse portfolio includes healthcare, university, residential, financial institute, retail, mixed-use, super-highrise, and master planning. She is Chapter Secretary of AIA Hong Kong 20152017 and founding chair of the chapter's young architects group.

The mainstreaming of digital technologies empowers architects in design and execution. As tools such as 3D printers, virtual reality, and drones become mainstream, their applications are no longer restricted to specialty design firms. For humanitarian design, these technologies elevate architects’ problem-solving capacity in a meaningful context where resource efficiency, rapid mobilization, efficient deployment, and information exchange have real-life applications. In this Design With Conscience issue, CONNECTION takes a look at recent examples of how technologies are being employed in humanitarian intervention.

Delivery Drones Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, are pilotless and uncrewed aircraft capable of flight either by remote control or through on-board computers. The concept was developed more than a century ago for military use. During World War I, aerial torpedoes were controlled by gyroscopes. At present, about 60 percent of drone applications are for communications and media10,

ABOVE: INTERIOR OF A BETTER SHELTER PROTOTYPE IN KAWERGOSK REFUGEE CAMP, ERBLL, IRAQ - Courtesy of Better Shelter.org

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and they are primarily used for data collection. In the construction industry, the application in surveying is simply logical because it eliminates the need for a human surveyor scanning the site, significantly reducing cost and time. In addition to data collection, drones are increasingly used as a delivery platform.1-4 Last year, the Norman Foster Foundation unveiled the Droneport, which could deliver medical supplies to inaccessible areas in Rwanda or other places in Africa. The drone is a logical solution for overcoming challenges of delivery where road infrastructure is lacking. In collaboration with the drone company Red Line, which serves developing communities, emergency drones deliver blood and other precious medical supplies. A supplementary network named Blue Line will transport cargo. This humanitarian application put delivery drones in a very different light than that of their commercial use. In an urban context, privacy and annoyance are major concerns. Yet where infrastructure does not even exist, such problems become irrelevant.5-7 3D Printing & Virtual Reality Simulation has been a crucial tool in medical training, providing real-life experiential health care learning that does not put patients at risk.7 If the technology is sophisticated enough for patient-specific virtual reality and neurosurgical simulation8, it is only logical that it can also be applied to design. In recent years, Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has been utilizing 3D printing and virtual reality for hospital designs in disaster and war zones.4,5 Before they arrive on the ground, doctors can be trained on the facilities to optimize efficiency and effectiveness. It is also easier for the medical workers to provide feedback on hospital

ABOVE: BETTER SHELTER - Courtesy of Åsa Sjöström / IKEA Company

design in such challenging environments. In 2013, after Typhoon Haiyan, the MSF team turned a digital model of a hospital it built in the Philippines into a 3D- printed and virtual experience. Instead of 2D drawings, the 3D and 4D experiences better prepared doctors and other medical workers through a game engine, allowing them to visualize and experience the new hospital and facilitating closer collaboration with designers.8-12 Prefabricated Homes & Renewable Energy While 3D printing can significantly reduce the cost of customized production, standardization is still key to efficiency and economy.1,2 The Swedish home-furnishing company IKEA has long been an exemplar in prefabrication, modularization, and standardization. Its nonprofit IKEA Foundation developed the Better Shelter units for housing displaced families in Iraq and Ethiopia. The 17.5-squaremeter units come in two flat packages, built with a steel frame and clad with insulated polypropylene panels, and are equipped with solar lights and cellphone chargers. Assembly instructions are explained in graphics, so language is not a barrier. The process requires only four people and no additional tools. The units are a major improvement over tents, which are typically used in housing refugees. Tents do not provide adequate weather protection in hot or cold climates. The Better Shelter units cost $1,250, about twice as much as a tent. However, they last for three years, compared with just six months for a tent, and more adequately address the needs of those in shelters. Within the last two years, more than 16,000 units have been deployed in crisis zones including Iraq and Nepal, where Doctors Without Borders used them for clinics after the devastating 2015 earthquake.13-17

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To provide utilities to the settlements, the IKEA Foundation also launched the Brighter Lives for Refugees campaign to raise fund or the United National High Commissioners for Refugees. From early 2014 to late 2015, one euro for every LED products sold in over 300 countires and online went into the fund to provide light and renewable energy for refugee families in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In Ethiopia and Jordan, the fund contributed to the installation of 56,000 solar-powered lanterns and 720 solar street lights, providing refugee families greater safety at night. 17 Limitations & Perspectives The IKEA Better Shelter unit was one of the projects shown last year in the MoMA exhibit Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter. Recent years saw an increased frequency in humanitarian needs, compounded by disasters both natural and man-made.

Amid the good intention of applying design thinking to humanitarian missions, experts also point out design’s limitations for resolving these problems.18,19 The potential of technologies notwithstanding, there are indeed limits to architects’ roles in humanitarian aid. ■

Reference 1. D’Aveni, R. (2015). The 3D Printing Revolution. Harvard Business Review. May 2015.

2. Holweg, M. (2015). The Limits of 3D Printing. Harvard Business Review. June 2015.

3. Anderson, C. (2017). When Drones Go to Work. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review.

May 2017.

4. Brynjolfsson, E., & McAffe, A. Artificial Intelligence, For Real. Retrieved July 2017 at Harvard Business Review www.hbr.org.

5. Norman Foster Foundation. (2016). www.normanfosterfoundation.org 6. Foster + Partners (2016). Droneport. https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/droneport 7. http://www.redorbit.com/reference/the-history-of-drone-technology/#2KmkfgYlZ7H0URtR.99 8. Miller, A. (2016). MSF takes advantage of 3D technology in crisis areas. Retrieved Sept. 2017 at https://www.tctmagazine.com/.

9. Center for Medical Simulation. Retrieved Sept. 2017 at https://harvardmedsim.org.

10. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/30/disaster-emergency-3d-printinghumanitarian-relief-nepal-earthquake 11. https://3dprint.com/107627/3d-printing-sustainable-aid/ 12. https://3dprint.com/128695/msf-virtual-reality-3d-printing/ 13. http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_AU/about_ikea/our_responsibility/ikea_social_initiative/ emergency_relief.html 14. BetterShelter. http://www.bettershelter.org/press/ 15. Engman, M. (2016). What Design Can Do - Refugee Challenge 2016 - https://vimeo.com/ 173635943 16. http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/IKEA-US-Recognized-for-Contribution-tothe-American-Red-Cross-Disaster-Responder-Program 17. IKEA Foundation. (2016). IKEA Brighter Lives for Refugees campaign raises 30.8 million euros for renewable energy sources for refugee families. https://www.ikeafoundation.org/press/ 18. Eric Cesal, E. (2015). Humanitarian Design is Hip, Now What? in Chun and Brisson (ed.) (2015) Ground Rules for Humanitarian Design, p. 212-217.

19. Chun, A.M.S., and Brisson, I.E. (ed.) (2015). Ground Rules for Humanitarian Design.

U.K.: Wiley.

ABOVE: BRIGHT LIGHT FROM REFUGEES - Courtesy of IKEA Foundation

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THE CASE FOR OTHERS IN ARCHITECTURE LOOK AT THE DISTRACTIONS OF DIVERSITY DESIRES AND HUMANITARIAN CHOIRS

BY ALICIA OLUSHOLA AJAYI

Alicia Olushola Ajayi recently joined MASS in 2015 as an Associate Designer. She is a member of the design team and is working on various projects including a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Her role as a design team member includes research and design support through multiple aspects of the project including mapping and developing community engagement strategies. Alicia’s past work engages political, economic, and social contexts and the nuances that correlate between the built environment, historical narratives and present day social issues. Alicia graduated with honors from Washington University in St. Louis with a dual masters in architecture and social work.

During the past few years, there has been a concerted effort to highlight the overwhelming disparity of minority and female architects in the field. To address the lack of “other,” the industry has zoomed in on the immediate issue of workplace demographics.

Calls to “solve” the diversity problem are consistently met with an overly simplified numbers game, in which the profession asks, “How do we get more minorities into firms?” At the same time, the outcry for more humanitarian architecture has become louder and started to claim mainstream space once again.

More and more firms are pledging to donate a certain percentage of pro bono work that targets projects in under-resourced communities. However, these conversations about the lack of diversity in architecture and the need for more socially aware practices are often limited and, more important, isolated from each other. But a connection can be made: Those being encouraged to come into the field often share demographic characteristics with the people whom humanitarian architecture is intended to serve. This is no coincidence. The industry has upheld a system that not only excludes certain groups as professionals but as clients and users.

While there may be a growing desire for the industry to follow its moral compass, the dialogues and solutions rarely address the root of the problem. Architecture is created by a white-maledominated, mostly Western world that for the most part ignores other perspectives despite the vast diversity of people who inhabit the built environment. Furthermore, there is no real desire to be inclusive of other perspectives. In the meantime, the field continues to lose its bearings with those who could benefit most from the built environment. Without addressing an overwhelming system that actively excludes any group other than the one in power, the industry risks becoming obsolete.

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The Case for a Paradigm Shift There are varying opinions on the state of architecture and its future. Profit margins have started to climb again in the last few years, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that the number of people entering the profession will outpace the number of available jobs by 2024.

On the other hand, many have noted the seemingly growing discord with the general public and how they value architecture, declaring the profession on a downturn. The debate about the state of architecture came to a head in 2015 with a series of public statements and op-eds. Frank Gehry called into question the quality of current architecture, Patrik Schumacher declared that architecture had no social responsibility, and New York Times critics Steven Bingler and Martin Pedersen offered a scorching critique called “How to Rebuild Architecture.” With the varying opinions, it is difficult to know whether architecture is in crisis or just a state of flux.

One way to determine the state of architecture is to look at what is most valued and by whom. Most of the praise is for beautifully laid-out pages and comes from those in the profession or who circulate in the “high art” world. However, for the most part, architecture is obscure to the general public. Can the profession’s creative generation really be considered progress if it is so inward facing and if no one outside the profession is there to witness it? I believe that our sheer existence is threatened and will continue to be diminished and marginalized if we do not reframe the way we value, and therefore perceive, what is created.

There are architects calling for this reframing of architecture.

Michael Ford, known as the Hip Hop Architect, creates spaces through a new lens of culture and music. Craig Wilkins, who is particularly interested in public-interest design and the production of various forms of space, understands that publicly accessible and

responsive design can radically transform the trajectory of lives and environments, especially for those on the margins of society. We must seek out different voices, not for the sake of difference but because it is the ideal way to interact with the other.

Architecture has to become diverse to become more inclusive in a comprehensive manner. Today, while form-driven processes dominate architectural thought and practice, we have failed to communicate the value of what we do to the general public. The dominant group leads the charge for moving architecture forward but ignores what it does not know and cannot relate to.

The Numbers Game At the 2016 AIA conference in Orlando, Michelle Obama urged the industry to extend its pipeline and expose younger children to architecture as it tries to entice minorities into the field. The conversation rarely turns to “why” we want to see more diversity in architecture, but the industry has tried this before with women.

In an effort to bring more into the profession, schools significantly increased the number of female architecture students. However, this is merely part of the solution.

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this seems like a noble effort, the profession still acknowledges this type of work as a subset. It is a clear distinction that suggests this architecture is only for specific locales, contexts, and populations.

And for some reason, this work often takes architects abroad to unfamiliar contexts where they are outsiders. The power dynamic of the all-knowing Western-educated architect often sets the scenario for ill-informed solutions that don’t encompass local customs. The mighty Western architects are inadvertently forcing underserved communities around the world to adapt to their civilization.

Conclusion So how do we begin to address the shortcomings of our profession when it comes to its lack of inclusiveness. The answer is complicated and will no doubt cause a long and arduous debate on how the profession should be shaped. But there are a few pioneers out there who have begun to make spaces where there has been a void. ■

While women may face unique challenges that make it difficult to work in the industry, we must take this as a signal that architecture is unwelcoming in some capacity. More important, we must address why numbers can’t be the only metric for achieving a more diverse culture in workplaces.

The Humanitarian Label Firms that donate services for more human-focused projects can offset the expense through profitable projects. We can learn a great deal about how the profession truly values diversity by observing how we define humanitarian architecture. Humanitarian architecture provides design services to communities in need. While

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ARCHITECTURE REQUIRES A RESILIENT FUTURE

BY JON PENNDORF, FAIA

JON PENNDORF, FAIA is an architect at Perkins+Will and was part of the team that drafted the Climate Ready DC Plan. He manages and consults on a wide variety of project types and serves on the firm-wide Resilience Task Force. Penndorf is also a member of the AIA Strategic Council and the AIA Committee on the Environment national Advisory Group

There are so many paths one could take in forecasting the future of architectural practice. The American Institute of Architects works diligently to promote an inclusive view and to create exciting careers in the profession for future generations. However, architecture must uniformly fold design for a changing world into its portfolio because our future as a whole will be impacted by planetary ecological shifts.

The term “climate change” can be polarizing to some groups, but the science behind meteorological and geologic shifts points to a worldwide increase in dealing with what we now call “extreme” events. Architects, designers, and urban planners have been urging communities to plan for crisis-level weather events for years.

Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy provided devastating and longlasting effects from which we gleaned lessons on preparedness and construction, but no one can safely and legitimately plan for a rain-and-wind event that has a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring.

ABOVE: PRIORITY PLANNING AREA MAP FROM THE VULNERABILITY & RISK ASSESSMENT - Courtesy of Perkins+Will

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Instead, communities need to understand that storms like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria are the true definition of climate change. This force of nature will change the geographical maps of countries and cities – and the natural boundaries of coastlines. The hurricanes will change the flood maps for large parts of the country and may (hopefully) change zoning and building codes. They will change the patterns of weather and predictions for future events.

Architects will find that design must include resilience as a key driver in the coming decades as we face more extreme events worldwide. Sustainability gained traction in the late 1990s with the founding of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). It was not a new concept – passive design is as old as recorded civilization, and modern culture became more environmentally focused during the oil crises of the 1970s. However, the USGBC’s founding and its approach to formalizing and recognizing exemplary design

OPPOSITE: INFRASTRUCTURE MAP SHOWING THE DISTRICT'S ENERGY TRANSPORTATION, WATER, AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS ESSENTIAL TO KEEPING THE CITY RUNNING Courtesy of Perkins+Will

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Houston was not silent before Hurricane Harvey when it came to understanding climatic risk. The city’s website provides a number of resources related to flood risk and insurance. The chief resilience officer, known as the “flood czar,” had been in office for over a year, taking the position after April 2016 floods displaced thousands of residents and helping the city understand how to protect its assets.

However, Houston’s rapid growth comes with rapid conversion of pervious surfaces, from soil to concrete. Designers will need to think creatively and at larger scales as the city resurfaces.

So where does the water go? The best-planned floodwalls and drainage can create worse consequences if water is pushed onto adjoining properties. The most resilient commercial office building or hospital can find itself isolated if neighboring properties are completely underwater and transportation is unavailable.

Sheltering in place can last only so long. Climate-based planning needs to be undertaken at the community level with an embrace of natural systems – think barrier islands and wetlands – to follow where floodwaters will go. This requires architects to think about solutions as systems. Our buildings are rooted to a landscape and part of a greater community. Siting must become more than just sun-path diagrams and parking access.

became a catalyst for change in the industry. Spurred by the group’s LEED rating system, sustainable design went from fringe conversation to mainstream requirement in less than 20 years.

Other groups followed with similar third-party certification systems, which only strengthened the movement to where we are now. In some jurisdictions, LEED itself is codified, and others use ANSI and ASTM standards to require minimum thresholds of energy and water conservation in new construction. The adoption of sustainability into mainstream design took less than two decades.

As the planet faces increased risks from short- and long-term threats, we can hypothesize that within the coming two decades, we will see new levels of codification in adaptation and mitigation.

However, many areas on the planet do not have 20 years to wait for guidelines.

ABOVE: MAP SHOWING COMMUNITY RESOURCES AT GREATEST RISK BASED ON THEIR LOCATION IN AREAS LIKELY TO BE EXPOSED TO FLOODING - Courtesy of Perkins+Will

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When Perkins+Will talks about climate adaptation or resilience planning, we mean the ability of a building, a community, or a city to bounce back from a shock or stress. Resilience planning is key to the preservation of life and property and to the continuity of commerce. Washington’s Climate Ready DC plan, released last year, is based on these principles. The plan details specific actions, such as taking a more critical look at flood mapping for the District, addressing zoning codes to limit development in the most vulnerable areas, and better engaging citizens for awareness and readiness. These actions will lead to more contextually appropriate design solutions that strive for long-term use and adaptability.

Note they are not individual building actions. The building scale is tremendously important for protecting life and minimizing energy needs. Architects will need to understand how these well-designed buildings sit within their greater communities, contributing to the positive resilience of the population.

Parallel to the need for more adaptive structures is the need for community flexibility to accommodate mass displacements that occur temporarily and permanently because of climaten evolution.

Whether we label people as refugees, evacuees, displaced persons, or uprooted citizens, climatic and political events can disrupt lives for vulnerable populations. While it is easy to use big

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Many areas on the planet do not have 20 years to wait for guidelines.

data to categorize a population as vulnerable because of income or education, climatic events do not respect those boundaries. As we saw with Hurricanes Irma and Maria this year, entire societies can be destroyed, leaving whole countries without the necessities of life. The people who live through these storms now have to decide whether to rebuild in place (and risk a similar catastrophic event in the future) or relocate to safer ground. Political upheaval can cause mass migration as well, as we saw in 2016 with countries around the globe opening doors to Syrians displaced by war.

Architects will be challenged in the coming years to use design thinking to develop culturally sensitive and flexible solutions to these problems. Resilience is just as much a social-equity issue as it is a climatic issue.

Many of the principles discussed in this article are also tenets of the New Urban Agenda. The ideas that came out of the United Nations Habitat III conference in October 2016 focus on creating healthier and more equitable cities. More and more people worldwide are migrating to cities, and infrastructure (including housing and public buildings) needs to keep pace without taxing the greater ecology.

Urban planning, economics, resilience, and equity are core to the New Urban Agenda and will shape development worldwide over the next 20 years. â–

ABOVE: RISING SEA LEVELS AND EXTREME PRECIPITATION AFFECT BOTH THE PHYSICAL ASSETS OF THE CITY AND THEIR RESIDENTS - Courtesy of Perkins+Will

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BUILDING HOLISTIC RESILIENCE AFTER DISASTER

BY OPERATION RESILIENT LIVING & INNOVATION (ORLI+)

Alex Alaimo, AIA currently serves as a Director at Large for the AIA National Associates Committee (NAC) where he serves to promote engagement among emerging professionals. He founded Operation Resilient Long Island (ORLI) which was a post sandy ideas accelerator. He graduated B.Arch at NYIT and is currently employed by PBDW Architects in New York.

Eric P. Olsen is a landscape designer with an expertise in ecological and landscape resilience in urban areas. His professional experience encompasses a wide array of projects spanning many scales and regions, highlighted by a focus on work in the public sector working as a part of large and multidisciplinary teams. Olsen received Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota and is a Sustainable SITES Accredited Professional.

Daniel Horn, Assoc. AIA is an architectural designer with over four years of experience working in New York City on postSandy recovery and resiliency projects. He is a resilience activist and has been engaged in research, design and community engagement.

Dan has been actively involved as a committee member in a number of Sandy recovery programs.

Dan graduated with his Bachelor’s in Architecture from New York Institute of Technology in 2013.

With this year’s continuous cycle of powerful tropical storms pounding the U.S. and small Caribbean nations, the need to understand, proliferate, and build resilience is becoming ever more imperative. The Gulf Coast and Atlantic Basin have already seen several major hurricanes, the most recent of which are Irma, Harvey, and Maria, and all left the hardest-hit areas trying to pick up the pieces in their wake. Even though September is commonly accepted as the peak of hurricane season, it is abnormal to see so many major storms affect the U.S. within such a short time frame.

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Climate change is a reality, and we are seeing the negative effects unfold across much of the globe on a continual basis. From heat waves and droughts to hurricanes and flooding, climate-related disasters are becoming commonplace for many of the world’s communities. Recently, in the U.S., we’ve seen climate-changerelated tropical cyclones take a toll on the communities at greatest risk, those along the coastlines. In fact, five of the 10 most powerful hurricanes and seven of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.1 According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma grew to be the strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, wiping out entire islands, 2 many of which are also enduring the effects of Maria. The proliferation of powerful tropical cyclones has already made a historic impact on the world's coastal communities this year.

This is not a coincidence. We know that scientific studies point to a connection between warmer oceans and more powerful tropical cyclones. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world have been warning us for years to prepare for more frequent and more powerful storms. Hurricanes grab their strength and intensity from warm waters, and warming oceans can be attributed to a warmer atmosphere caused by increased carbon emissions. Stronger storms fueled by warmer ocean waters bring with them higher storm surges and wind speeds, which result in more catastrophic damage.

As we’ve seen, each tragedy is defined both by the specific characteristics of the storm and the typologies of man-made developments coupled with the local ecological conditions they overlap. Each storm is drastically different than the previous one, and it is extremely difficult to compare them. Additionally, each locale where storms hit is developed in different ways and sits within unique natural landscapes. This development often disregards natural systems, thus harming the people who call these places home. During Harvey, we saw intense rainfall that reached record-breaking levels, over 50 inches in some areas. The city’s decision to develop in sporadic and low-lying areas along bayous and rivers increased the risk for the communities that now live there. With Irma, and now Maria, we’ve seen intense winds, at times above 150 mph, that cause major damage to buildings and natural ecosystems. Buildings that do not conform to current code were susceptible to the most damage.

During Superstorm Sandy, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut saw unprecedented storm surges as the main destructive force.

Low-income communities have historically been pushed to the

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Climate change is a reality, and we are seeing the negative effects unfold across much of the globe on a continual basis.

ABOVE: A SANDY-DAMAGED HOME IN LINDENHURST, NY SITS PRECARIOUSLY ON ITS TEMPORARY CRIBBING - Courtesy of ORLI+

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water's edge, where low-lying areas are less desirable for high-end developments. Sustained residential development in these coastal areas shows that people are unwilling and/or unable to easily pick up and move away from at-risk locations. During Katrina, storm surge and severe infrastructure failures devastated inland communities around the entire city.

However, the most affected and at-risk communities often have the greatest capacity for social resilience. These tightknit neighborhoods come together, and it drastically improves their recovery efforts as they move forward. This is important to recognize and capitalize on, especially in an age when government programs and strategies for recovery and improvement fall short, leaving many communities and homeowners behind with complex processes and red tape.

In late 2012, Operation Resilient Long Island (ORLI) formed in response to Superstorm Sandy as a grassroots group of architecture and design students who wanted to effect change in a positive way. We knew that local communities had never seen this type of damage, so we first created informational pamphlets that broke down FEMA’s confusing rebuilding and insurance information into a digestible format. We used our unique skills and architectural training to visually and graphically represent how rebuilding would take place. Today, we are ORLI+ (Operation Resilient Living & Innovation), a rebranded version of ORLI that is working toward holistic resilience in communities.

We also see that because each community is tight-knit, their communication vastly improves their immediate recovery.

Grassroots groups pop up everywhere in the affected areas to

Moving forward after a disaster, we need to foster the development of holistic resilience in communities that will continue to be vulnerable to environmental risk and disruption. As we consider

ABOVE & OPPOSITE: PROPOSAL FOR THE RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE URBAN WATERFRONT COMMUNITY DESIGN TYPOLOGIES - Courtesy of ORLI+

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give back, and the most active voices in the community become leaders of those groups. They donate food, water, supplies, and, most important, their time.

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We also see that because each community is tight-knit, their communication vastly improves their immediate recovery. the best options for capitalizing on existing assets to catalyze further community resilience, several critical strategies emerge as guiding principles: research, engagement, empowerment, and design. Researching and disseminating strategies for innovative approaches to achieving resilience in communities is crucial for creating a global network of grounded solutions. Reimagining the role of design professionals and processes through engagement facilitates a more inclusive, integrated, and resilient dialogue between designers and the public. Empowering communities to invest in their futures with initiatives and projects based on their local needs produces a consistent and sustained momentum toward resilient visions and plans. Designing solutions for future disturbances and disasters, both natural and man-made, is paramount for catalyzing change and action. With these specific methodologies, we can help communities plan and rebuild for the uncertain future.

These same efforts need to be replicated in Houston, Florida, and throughout the Caribbean. Communities must be given the proper tools and information to evaluate, digest, and disseminate

for themselves, therefore empowering their long-term holistic resilience in partnership with professional and technical experts.

ORLI+’s intention is to maintain close contact with our friends in these affected areas. We are beginning to share our lessons learned after Sandy and will distribute these to our colleagues so they can analyze and apply local vernacular and tailor the information to their specific neighborhoods. After a disaster, communities’ most critical need is support, and ORLI+ is committed to offering ours in any way we can to help them bounce back to pre-storm function and empower them to spring forward into a more holistic and sustained resilience for the future. ■Never heard of the NDSA? H.R. 2938, the National Design Services Act of 2015 (NDSA), would enable recent architecture graduates to provide design and planning services for their communities in exchange for student debt repayment. This will contribute to the economic revitalization of underserved communities while relieving financial burdens on the next generation of architects and elevating the profession in the process.

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#ORLI+ is joining in on the #YAFchat today. Come chat with us September #YAFchat about #resilience !

2:25 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY Resiliency

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Guest host Stacey Keller by

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6 Views Replying to @szkeller13

10 days ago

1 6 #Yafchat - A1: ZWe've Stacey Kellerseen some coastal flooding and increased Follow and exacerbated @szkeller13 "nuisance flooding" prove to be more severe.

2:11 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY

AIA #YAFchat YAF

Stacey Z Keller Followto Q# with A# As a reminder, respond and be sure to @szkeller13 include #YAFchat. Let’s get started!

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Hi everyone! Welcome to the #YAFchat on #Resiliency! I’m Lora Teagarden,2:05 PR Director @AIAYAF. You can typ find me over PM - for Sep 27, 2017 at @L2DesignLLC.

#YAFchat Hello! This is @szkeller13 #YAF Advocacy Committee Resiliency Lead, #AIAWI Disaster Preparedness Chair. Ready to chat #Resiliency?

2:00 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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ORLI+ Stacey Z Keller Follow Follow #YAFchat A1: The DC area had a very mild August (high @ORLIPLUS @szkeller13 pressure stayed put), but are experiencing#YAFchat very hot Sept. temps.

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@szkeller13

2:11 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY

#YAFchat Q1: The 2017 Hurricane season is proving to be more intense than normal, what affect is it having on you and your Jon Penndorf ORLI+ Follow @SnarkitectDC area? @ORLIPLUS Jon Penndorf @SnarkitectDC

2:06 PM - Sep 27, 2017 Ben Ward

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#Yafchat - A1: We've seen some coastal flooding and increased and exacerbated "nuisance flooding" prove to be more severe.

1 @benward42 1 2:11 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY

ORLI+

@ORLIPLUS

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2:11 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY

pressure stayed put), but are experiencing very hot Sept. temps.

2

2:12 PM - Sep 27, 2017

#YAFchat Sorry I couldn't make chat yesterday but I did want to chime in. Q1: So far we have been lucky in SC, only TS winds and rain.

Jon Penndorf

10:48 AM - Sep 28, 2017 @SnarkitectDC

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#YAFchat A1: The DC area had a very mild August (high pressure stayed put), but are experiencing very hot Sept. temps.

2:12 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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Follow #YAFchat A1: The DC area had a very mild August (high pressure stayed put), but are experiencing very hot Sept. temps.

2:12 PM - Sep 27, 2017

@falloutstudio

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Ben Ward

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Stacey Z Keller @szkeller13

10:48 AM - Sep 28, 2017

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Q2: Preparedness is key to resilience. What Disaster Preparedness Program (Rapid Assessment/SAP) Programs are

Stacey Z Keller

See the list if you are unaware. #YAFchat

2:12 PM - Sep 27, 2017 @szkeller13 2

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Q2: Preparedness is key to resilience. What Disaster Preparedness Program (Rapid Assessment/SAP) Programs are in your area? #YAFchat 2:12 PM - Sep 27, 2017 2

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A2: In NY, we've had #ATC45 & ATC20 training and #CalEMA #SAP training, also #HURRIPLAN #YAFCHAT 2:15 PM - Sep 27, 2017 · Brooklyn, NY

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#YAFchat Q2: AIASC had our Resilience Committee meeting last Friday, lots of great goals. SAP training Oct 6th cvent.com/events/2017-ai…

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See the list if you are unaware. #YAFchat 2:14 PM - Sep 27, 2017 2

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A2: In NY, we've had #ATC45 & ATC20 training and #CalEMA

10:49 AM - Sep 28, 2017 2017 AIASC SAP Training - Charleston

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Moderated by the 2016-2017 Safety AIA YAF Public Relations Director Lora Teagarden Assessment Program (SAP) Training and hosted by the AIA Young Architects Forum (YAF).Follow The yafchat for the month Ben Ward Workshop @benward42 of September focused on #Resiliency cvent.com

AIA YAF Monthly Tweet-up 27 SEPTEMBER, 2-3:00pm Eastern Time

#YAFchat Q2: AIASC had our Resilience Committee meeting last Friday, lots of great goals. SAP training Oct 6th cvent.com/events/2017-ai…

Theme: #Resiliency Hashtag: #YAFChat

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@szkeller13 Q3: Building codes often reduce the affect disasters have. Any Q3: Building codes building often reduce the affect disasters Any reduced examples how stronger codes wouldhave. have examples how stronger building codes would have reduced damage? #YAFchat damage? #YAFchat 2:18 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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2:20 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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@benward42 @benward42

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2:30 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1

Q4

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Q4: FEMA Disaster Assistance provides finite recovery assistance. What other ways do communities require assistance from disasters. #YAFchat 2:31 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1

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@szkeller13

Q4: FEMA Disaster Assistance provides finite recovery assistance. What other ways do communities require assistance from disasters. #YAFchat 2:31 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1

1

1

Stacey Z Keller

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A4: New Urban Plans, Sustainability add ons, SMART Growth, Public-Private Partnerships for Development, Architectural Standards #YAFchat 2:38 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1

Ben Ward

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1

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10:52 AM - Sep 28, 2017

Stacey Z Keller

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@szkeller13 2:42 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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2:43 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1 3 @benward42

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#YAFchat A6: In my area of the coast aging population is a concern, they are building more retirement communities, how do we evacuate them?

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Jon Penndorf

@SnarkitectDC #YAFchat - great time to be a citizen architect.

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THE ARCHITECTURE AND JOURNAL CONNECTION sewer; overdependence cars OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM 1 3 DESIGNon Follow

10:54 AM - Sep 28, 2017

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2:43 PM - Sep 2017water infrastructure; undersized storm #YAFchat A6:27, aging

@benward42

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Replying to @falloutstudio

2:51 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Ben Ward 2:49 PM - Sep 27, 2017

@szkeller13 2:49@SnarkitectDC PM - Sep 27, 2017

Ben Ward

A6: Urban Sprawl, declining roadways, no investment on Replying to @falloutstudio alternative transportation or even buses #YAFchat

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Jon Penndorf

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@SnarkitectDC

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#YAFchat A6: aging water infrastructure; undersized storm Stacey Z Keller sewer; overdependence on cars Follow Jon Penndorf

@SnarkitectDC 1

2:46 PM - Sep 27, 2017

@szkeller13

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2:49 PM27, - Sep 27, 2017 2:42 PM - Sep 2017 @SnarkitectDC

2:51 PM PM -- Sep Sep 27, 27, 2017 2017 2:49

Q6:1What other urban trends require are affecting your 1 communities resilience ie. aging infrastructure, declining populations, etc #YAFchat

Jon Penndorf

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2:41 PM - Sep 27, 2017 Q6: What other urban trends require are affecting your 2:46 PM - Sep 27, 2017 2 communities resilience ie. aging infrastructure, declining Stacey Z Keller Follow 1 2 populations, etc #YAFchat @szkeller13

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2:46 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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2:46 PM - Sep 27, 2017

#YAFchat - great1 time 3to be a citizen architect.

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Stacey Z Keller @SnarkitectDC

Q6: What other urban trends require are affecting your 2 communities1resilience ie. aging infrastructure, declining Jamie Crawley Jon Penndorf populations, etc #YAFchat @falloutstudio

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Replying to @falloutstudio @SnarkitectDC #YAFchat - great time to be a citizen architect.

Replying2:43 to @falloutstudio PM - Sep 27, 2017

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A5: raising awareness in project workthe within the firm, but also#YAFchat using media and social media to elevate discussion.

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Stacey Z Keller @szkeller13

Stacey Z Keller @szkeller13

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Q7: What resources have been helpful to you for understanding resilience planning? #YAFchat 2:52 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Stacey Z Keller

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@szkeller13

A6: Urban Sprawl, declining roadways, no investment on alternative transportation or even buses #YAFchat

Lora Teagarden @L2DesignLLC

2:51 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Ben Ward

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Stacey Z Keller

YAF Monthly Tweet-up 27 SEPTEMBER, 2-3:00pm Eastern Time

A7: orliplus.org aia.org/topics/56-resi… crpanel.nist.gov #YAFchat

PR Director. @RATIOglobal team.

#YAFchat A6:- In my28, area2017 of the coast aging population is a 10:54 AM Sep concern, they are building more retirement communities, how do we evacuate them?

Q7

Theme: #Resiliency Hashtag: #YAFChat

2:56 PM - Sep 27, 2017 Stacey Z Keller

#Indianapolis

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AIA @szkeller13

Architect. Adventurer. Biz Owner. ARESketches™

#YAFchat A6: In my area of the coast aging population is a author 2017how @AIAnational concern, they are building more (#AREsketches). retirementFollow communities, do Ben Ward @benward42 #youngarchitect award winner. @AIAYAF we evacuate them?

@szkeller13

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A7: orliplus.org aia.org/topics/56-resi… crpanel.nist.gov #YAFchat

Stacey Z Keller

Stacey Z Keller

Q7: What resources have been helpful to you for understanding Q7: What resources have been helpful to you for resilience planning? #YAFchat

Q8

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@szkeller13 @szkeller13

understanding

resilience planning? #YAFchat 2:52 PM - Sep 27, 2017

2:56 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Stacey Z Keller

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@szkeller13

Staceydo Z Keller Q8: How we as architects advocate for Follow innovation and @szkeller13 resilient design? #YAFchat

Q8: How do we as architects advocate for innovation and 3:00 PM - Sep 27, 2017 resilient design? #YAFchat

2:52 PM - Sep 27, 2017

3:00 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Jon Penndorf

Stacey Z Keller Stacey Z Keller

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@SnarkitectDC

@szkeller13

#YAFchat A7: Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities; IBHS; USJon Climate Resilience Toolkit; RELi checklist Penndorf

A8: Advocate for current model building codes. Assist w/ city master planning. Reach out to your State Emergency A8: Advocate for current model building codes. Assist Management Group #YAFchat master planning.

Reach out to your State Emergency

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2:56 PM - Sep 27, 2017 @SnarkitectDC

Stacey Z Keller @szkeller13

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w/ city

3:04 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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Management Group #YAFchat

#YAFchat A7: Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities; IBHS; US Climate Resilience Toolkit; RELi checklist 2:56 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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@szkeller13

3:04 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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4

A7: orliplus.org aia.org/topics/56-resi… crpanel.nist.gov #YAFchat

Ben Ward

@benward42

2:56 PM - Sep 27, 2017

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#YAFchat A8: we have to force ourselves to the table almost.

Call your EMD and Planning Officials, attend meetings, start networking.

Ben Ward 10:56 AM -@benward42 Sep 28, 2017

Stacey Z Keller

#YAFchat A8: we have to force ourselves to the table almost.

Call your EMD and Planning Officials, attend meetings, start networking.

Follow

@szkeller13

Q8: How do we as architects advocate for innovation and resilient design? #YAFchat

10:56 AM - Sep 28, 2017

3:00 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Stacey Z Keller

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@szkeller13

Stacey Z Keller

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@szkeller13

Thanks everyone for a great #YAFchat ! Keep the conversation alive and think resiliency. Thanks @L2DesignLLC & @AIAYAF for the opportunity!

A8: Advocate for current model building codes. Assist w/ city master planning. Reach out to your State Emergency Management Group #YAFchat 3:04 PM - Sep 27, 2017

3:07 PM - Sep 27, 2017 1

Ben Ward

7

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@benward42

Jon Penndorf

#YAFchat A8: we have to force ourselves to the table almost.

Call your EMD and Planning Officials, attend meetings, start @SnarkitectDC networking.

10:56 AM - Sep 28, 2017

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#YAFchat Have to sign off for now. Thanks for the chat!

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Q3 -2017

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#YAspotlight @AIAYAF

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THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

@aiayaf is kicking off a new series spotlighting Young Architects from around the country. First up in our YA feature is @aj.sustaita ; scroll through the story for a fun question and answer session with AJ. Then meet @l2designllc! Lora is currently serving as the Public Relations Director for the YAF Advisory Committee. She is also the author of #aresketches, an outstanding visual guide to taking the ARE. Then featured was Christian Jordan @pja_arch, the Young Architect Regional Director for Pennsylvania.

447 Instagram Followers Young Archtiects Spotlight Hashtag: #YAspotlight

Q3 -2017

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LEADERSHIP PROFILE

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHT AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHLEEN GORDON

BY YU-NGOK LO

Kathleen Gordon, Assoc. AIA holds a Bachelor's in Architecture from Louisiana State University where she was also involved with LSU's Office of Community Design and Development. She has been the executive director of AIA Baton Rouge since 2008 and is actively involved in disaster recovery and planning. Gordon joined the AIA National Disaster Assistance Committee in 2017 where she has been assisting chapters, members, and communities during recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as well as assisting all with future recovery and resiliency planning.

YL: You first started your architectural career on a more traditional path, working in multiple architectural firms. How did you decide to become the executive director of AIA Baton Rouge? What motivated you to make the career change?

Kathleen Gordon (KG): I’m not sure I would consider it an actual “career change,” but definitely a shift in focus for sure. I’d always struggled with the notion that architects didn’t promote themselves or their work, have trouble “patting themselves on the back” for things they do well, and struggle with finding time to market. So, while attending an AIA Baton Rouge board meeting one morning for a different topic, I heard discussion of the desire to hire an executive director to assist in growing the chapter and to take it from a volunteer-run component to a staffed component. The idea intrigued me, so I reached out to a past mentor of mine that also served on the board, and one thing just led to another. … I took a pay cut and bit the bullet because I believe in the mission and have a passion not only for our field of work, but also for our members. That move provided so much more than just marketing!

YL: Tell us about your work on the aftermath of the 2016 flooding in Louisiana.

KG: Much of it was organic at a local level; people needed help, and others were willing to assist. From organizing members to help people gut and clean out their homes to homeowners that had so many questions about how and what to do next. It was an opportunity not only for service, but knowledge-sharing and collaboration. It provided a unique opportunity for architects and those in the field to share their knowledge, and it resulted in not only placing architects as experts in the field, but it helped to educate the public about why architects are needed. AIA Baton Rouge hosted several community meetings, bringing together a variety of experts that simply made themselves available to answer question after question from community members. Topics included but certainly not limited to: • How to deal with mold.

• How to dry out a home.

YL: You have been on many fronts dealing with disaster recovery. Tell us about your work and what got you so passionate about this.

KG: Service to others is important, no matter the reason.

Architects also have an innate ability to connect dots and solve problems. Living in an area that is prone to natural disturbances, as well as in a world where the climate is changing, we’ve often discussed getting involved with communities to assist them in their work to be more resilient.

We have the knowledge to protect people and their homes and businesses and should share it with others while we learn from them as well. Not only is it a smart business move, but you always get more in return than you put into those kinds of efforts. My passion probably comes from my faith and knowing that we are better as a whole than simply as individuals. The Great Flood of 2016 in Louisiana likely highlighted that and provided avenues for that passion to flourish for so many of us.

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• What a scope of work is.

• Why a contract is needed and where to get one.

• How to hire and verify credentials for people they may hire for repairs.

In addition, connecting them with loan experts, building officials for permitting questions, and local officials to answer community-related questions all served as a one-stop shop for those in need. It also served to build many relationships that would later prove to provide further assistance to communities in future planning. In addition to those community meetings, we participated (and still do) in many meetings and projects with our state officials (those working on recovery as well as elected officials) as well as federal partners that have led to further the recovery process quicker than ever before and will lead to more resilient futures for all of us. It was a devastating, humbling, and life-altering event for so many of us. … You can let a disaster break you forever, or you can learn from it. We will be better, personally and professionally, for it!

THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

DESIGN WITH CONSCIENCE

YL: Given the damages Houston suffered due to Hurricane Harvey, what’s the lesson learned? How is AIA Baton Rouge helping on the city’s recovery effort?

YL: How can architects use their talents and expertise to help local communities to prepare for the next 100-year flood or storm events?

KG: When a system sits over the top of your city and dumps that much water so quickly and for so long, there’s no doubt that there are going to be issues, some of which were catastrophic. My hope is that, in addition to not working in silos, communities will engage and truly listen to experts in the field, and we can take the first step to that. The damages there will indeed highlight our general need for adoption and application of good building codes, effective permitting, more resilient design and planning, and prudent land-use strategies.

We can’t ignore water or try to disregard it in our design and construction. We are looking at a future with the potential for increased volume during these events and must design our cities and buildings to live with water and accommodate for it. We must be good stewards of the environment we are given to work within, as well as our bottom lines in business.

Both can indeed be done together. AIA offers a multitude of opportunities and resources for us to utilize in our firms as well as ways to work with the public. The AIA’s Disaster Assistance Committee, Communities by Design, Codes and Standards Committee, and Codes Advocacy Network are all great sources. … Google them, get involved, and bring them to your own chapters! AIA Baton Rouge, as well as AIA Louisiana, is currently working with Texas chapters as they recover through our staff, CACE (Council of Architectural Component Executives), network, and frequent calls and will continue to do so as long as they need.

KG: Get involved; don’t wait for someone or some group to ask you. … Go to the various community meetings; get involved with AIA in a variety of ways. … Here’s a link to some options: https://www.aia.org/articles/92306-how-to-get-involved-withdisaster-assistance YL: Anything you would like to add?

KG: I am extremely hopeful at the opportunities we all have to make our profession better and learn from each other and excited about what our members are doing. There’s NO WAY I could do any of this on my own. Locally, we have a “small-er” but mighty group of members, and when you pair that with state and national level, we are a force in and of our own! We need to remember that we alone are not the be-all-end-all; there is much we can learn from others, as well as much we can share. Both Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, will all bring to light areas where we, as communities, need to ensure our building codes are effective and our cities are being designed by professionals that know what they’re doing. As professionals, we need to ensure that we are always seeking ways to learn … about new technology, new processes, lessons from history, testing new ideas, and more, so that we can share that knowledge and experience when it comes time.■

YL: Does AIA Baton Rouge partner with other local nonprofits in the area to help local communities?

KG: Absolutely! I’m not arrogant enough to think that I have all the answers. (Or at all many times! Haha.) There are other great organizations working on similar efforts, and building on those together is how we will all rise. Seek out the collateral organization, pick each other’s brains about who’s doing what, find the common ground of programs/initiatives, and do good work!

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WHAT IS THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM? The Young Architects Forum is the voice of architects in the early stages of their career and the catalyst for change within the profession and our communities. Working closely with the AIA College of Fellows and the American Institute of Architects as a whole, the YAF is leading the future of the profession with a focus on architects licensed less than 10 years. The national YAF Advisory Committee is charged with encouraging the development of national and regional programs of interest to young architects and supporting the creation of YAF groups within local chapters. Approximately 23,000 AIA members are represented by the YAF. YAF programs, activities, and resources serve young architects by providing information and leadership; promoting excellence through fellowship with other professionals; and encouraging mentoring to enhance individual, community, and professional development.

GOALS OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM To encourage professional growth and leadership development among recently licensed architects through interaction and collaboration within the AIA and allied groups.

To build a national network and serve as a collective voice for young architects by working to ensure that issues of particular relevance to young architects are appropriately addressed by the Institute.

To make AIA membership valuable to young architects and to develop the future leadership of the profession.

AIA National Washington D.C.

GET CONNECTED PUT YOURSELF ON THE MAP THIS ISSUE FEATURES CONTRIBUTING ARTICLES FROM THESE MAPPED LOCATIONS.

A vibrant community AIA is a vibrant community of architecture and industry professionals that are transforming our profession. Members enjoy access to industry-best benefits, products and services that support practice and professional development.

Visit aia.org to learn more about how you can leverage all that we have to offer and become a member.

Join us.

YAF GET CONNECTED

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2017

YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM

CELEBRATING 26 YEARS OF ADVANCING THE CAREERS OF YOUNG ARCHITECTS