Grassroots 2021

Speaker: Christopher Locke

Christophe Locke, a co-founder of Designing in Color, will lead an engaging session with students about the impacts of racialized space in our lives and cities. Academia has long celebrated white space in the design and history of architecture. As a result, the prevalence of white supremacy is rampant in the profession.

This session will dissect how white supremacy impacts students and their work and the importance of creating of safe space. In discussion, participants will be asked to live and design with a double consciousness, as made famous by WED. Dubois, the practice of looking at one’s self through someone else’s point of view. Students will learn how to actively construct safe spaces for dialogue that help lead to better environments for a wide range of identities, especially those who have been historically silenced. Bring you attentiveness and we invite you to be vulnerable as we move toward a profession that heals space instead of disrupting it.

Speaker: Paul Bamson

Learn new and practical time saving techniques by using Grasshopper to optimize and automate your design workflow. We will be exploring many custom tools that I use on a daily basis while practicing urban design and architecture professionally. 

Speakers:

Moderator: Robert Gonzalez, Dean, University of New Mexico
Panelists:
Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin
Anne Bordeleau, Director, University of Waterloo
Dora-Epstein Jones, Chair, Texas Tech University
Michael Monti, Executive Director, ACSA

This year we heard calls for architecture schools to update hiring practices, overhaul curriculum, and investigate the structures of power within architectural education to address systemic racism in academia and the profession. After a summer of national reckoning, where do we stand now after a mostly virtual year? What lessons have been learned? How can students, faculty, and advisors work together to enact change in their schools? In this panel discussion we’ll hear answers to these questions from faculty and administrators who have witnessed student advocacy first hand.

Speaker: Dr. Upali Nanda

Principal and Director of Research at HKS / Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning at University of Michigan

Description: In this presentation we will discuss the role of research, and what it means – and could mean – to the profession of architecture. We’ll discuss how it can help us build agency, and how it can create a foundation for a better future – for our profession, and through our profession, for the world.

Speakers:

Jenny Kawecki: Jenny Kawecki is a senior content producer on NCARB’s Marketing & Communications team, where she leads content development for NCARB by the Numbers and the Baseline on Belonging report. Through her role, Jenny helps craft NCARB’s communications for students, licensure candidates, and architects. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Media, Culture, and the Arts from the King’s College in New York, New York. 

Martin Smith AIA, NCARB, LEED Green Assoc., CSM: Martin Smith joined NCARB in 2009 to develop and expand NCARB’s outreach efforts to universities and the profession. Today, he has an important role in developing and overseeing the Architectural Experience Program® (AXP®), Architect Licensing Advisors Program, alternative programs for NCARB Certification, and additional programs within the Experience + Education directorate.

Before NCARB, Smith worked in architecture firms in the New York City area. Smith holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Syracuse University and is licensed to practice architecture in New York. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects, has achieved the qualification of LEED Green Associate, and holds the NCARB Certificate for national reciprocity.

Wondering what it is like in the profession, or how to find your first job? Join NCARB to review the latest trends along the path to licensure, with findings from the 2021 edition of NCARB By the Numbers and NCARB and NOMA’s joint Baseline on Belonging survey. Plus, learn how to use the Architectural Experience Program®(AXP®) to support your development and get tips from our experts on empowering yourself as you navigate the path to becoming an architect.

Speakers:Ann Dang, Simone Delaney, Jati Zunaibi, Kami Beckford

Design as Protest (DAP) is a collective of anti-racist designers dedicated to Design Justice in the built environment. Co-organized by BIPOC designers, DAP exists to hold our professions accountable in reversing the violence and injustice that architecture, design, and urban planning practices have inflicted upon Black people and communities of color. Join us on Sunday, July 25th, as we share what we’ve been able to accomplish and what we’ve learned over a year’s worth of organizing and community building, and see how you can organize towards Design Justice in your spaces.

Speaker: Michael Ross, Sites AP, University of Tennessee School of Landscape Architecture

The topics covered will center around landscape architecture’s multidisciplinary collaborations and the role landscape centered work plays in addressing contemporary issues of community and ecological resilience.

Speaker: Trinity Simons, Executive Director at Mayors’ Institute on City Design

You’re getting an architecture degree, but you can already feel the pull beyond the walls of the building. How do our buildings interact with the public realm? Who is making decisions about our buildings and sites before architects are even hired? Why do so many of our cities look the same, and are banal at that?

In this session, we will look at avenues architects can pursue to influence the built environment beyond a narrow definition of what a “Capital A” architect does. While this session may expand your thinking to alternate career paths, topics covered will be just as relevant to anyone who desires to practice architecture, but with a larger sphere of influence. .

Workshop Leaders:
Ruth Gless, FAIA, Managing Principal at Lincoln Street Studio, LTD
Tim Hawk, FAIA, President at WSA
Terry Welker, FAIA, Architect / Sculptor at Welker Studio

We all want to have sketchbooks full of beautiful buildings and cityscapes, but how do you get there? You know the answer, it takes practice! Join us for a guided sketching workshop led by long-time friends of the AIAS: Ruth Gless, Tim Hawk, Joel Pominville, and Terry Welker. You’ll pick up some of the basics of sketching, as well as some pro tips from some of the best!

Speaker: Corey Clayborne, FAIA