Connection
President’s message:
Achieve positive, lasting change In our schools, office buildings, public spaces, and communities, people need and deserve spaces that are healthy, equitable, and safe. From the heroic efforts of front-line health workers to the more mundane contributions of average Americans staying home, everyone has a role to play in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as it always has when crisis strikes, the architecture profession mobilized immediately to do our part — demonstrating every day what it means to be a citizen architect. From the early days of the crisis, firms contributed resources and 3D-printing technology to produce protective masks. And special task forces took action to coordinate with public officials. The Rapid Response Safety Space Assessment Task Force has been working to refine best practices for identifying and converting existing buildings into temporary health facilities. Closely related is the Implementation and Community Outreach Task Force, which supports components’ efforts to mobilize local architects, implement recommendations of the Temporary Facilities Task Force, and identify community response and recovery efforts.
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These efforts have been so effective that an alternate care site checklist produced by the AIA’s task force is now being distributed internationally by the United States Department of State, which translated the tool into three languages. While we continue this critical work to support the immediate medical response, we’re also looking ahead, applying the same health and safety principles toward eventually transitioning out of quarantine and back into offices, stores, restaurants, and schools. To that end, the AIA is convening virtual design charrettes with experts from the public health, engineering, and facilities management fields to develop solutions to safely reopen our buildings and plan for the future — including ensuring apartments and other housing are safer places to live. Supporting this essential work also means supporting the architecture community itself, and the AIA is committed to helping our community navigate these uncertain times. A third group — the COVID-19 Business Task Force — was formed for just that purpose, and it’s been working to identify challenges and find solutions to the economic disruption we’re all experiencing.