Associated Thoughts: Design Forum

AIA Virginia’s Design Forum, held this past June 3rd and 4th in Arlington, was the first in-person gathering for design-centric dialogue since its virtual transition in 2020. This year, the theme “South is Up!” featured Latin American designers and architects and the work they’ve done to improve not only their local communities but their countries as a whole through innovative and relationship-centric design.

Their projects, ranging from multi-family dwellings and single-family retreats to modern art museums and kindergarten school systems, emphasized the role that architecture has on society and the human condition. Thank you to Smiljan Radić – Chile, Viviana Peńa – Colombia, Alberto Kalach – Mexico, and Cazú Zegers – Chile for speaking about your experiences with AIA Virginia and our virtual attendees!

Kristen, Enid, Caitlin, and Cheyenne

Sitting among colleagues and friends as we listened to the effect architecture has made in South America was already a powerful experience, but as an emerging professional in architecture, each message behind the presentations was more impactful than the last. Viviana Peńa’s presentation, titled “Architecture as an Instrument of Transformation,” featured three case studies from her hometown in Medellin, Colombia – community kindergartens, the Medellin Modern Art Museum, and a single-family residence near a forest reserve. She walked us through each of her projects using concise bullet points that explained how Colombia’s turbulent history has changed the country’s political landscape, and how architecture has an opportunity to remedy many of their challenges. Her mission through working on community kindergartens was to elevate the children of low-income families through improved education programs, thereby eliminating the perpetual cycle of generational poverty.

Cazú Zeger had a similar message of increasing educational opportunities for her country’s children, but her passion lies in changing the architecture education curriculum so that students can become the change she wishes to see in Chile’s future. Her architecture workshop for students in Chile achieves that, because as she explained in her “Mondo Nostro – The 21st Century Agency” presentation, man is a part of the natural ecosystem, and designed to integrate into the system rather than on top of the system is a mindset our culture must learn and adapt to.

Meeting in person for Design Forum was especially valuable because it provided an opportunity for architecture students to be a part of our industry’s conversations. I was joined by three Architectural Design students from James Madison University, and the conversations we had over coffee following the conference highlighted how we envisioned our future in the built environment. Cheyenne, Enid, Kristen, and I discussed how design impacts the communities we inhabit, and how architectural academia can adapt to the rapidly-changing society and climate we live in. Students play a vital part in the future of architecture, and their participation and discussion at Design Forum were inspiring. All of this to say – Invite architecture students to AIA events and make them a part of the conversations we are having today.

Feel free to connect with me, too. What are some ways your firm is working with students and emerging professionals? Send me an email or a message on LinkedIn!

As always, I’m here for you.

Caitlin Morgan, Assoc. AIA, CSI-EP, CDT
Associate Director, AIA Virginia Board of Directors
caitlinmorgan3474@gmail.com

Design Forum: South is Up! Program Announced

Taking place in Northern Virginia on June 3–4, 2022, the Design Forum will continue the trend of showcasing thought-provoking and inspiring work. Design Forum: South is Up! features an incredible line-up of visionary Latin American designers that question, explore, and redefine spaces that respect and celebrate their urban and natural ecosystems and their rich cultural contexts.

Confirmed speakers include:

Smiljan Radić | Chile

Enrique Norten, Hon. FAIA | TEN Arquitectos, Mexico

Viviana Peńa | Colombia

Alberto Kalach | TAX Architects, Mexico

Cazú Zegers | Cazú Zegers Arquitectura, Chile

The program will take place at the award-winning Ballston Center at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. Save the dates of June 3–4. Registration is expected to open this spring.

Want to become a sponsor? Check out our sponsorship package and contact Jody Cranford.

Please join us in thanking our generous sponsors:

Gold

Sterling

Silver

Bronze

Registration for Foresight 2020 Now Open

Registration for Foresight 2020 is now open.

This virtual event is designed for architects, designers, and industry professionals seeking inspiration and insight. It takes place online Oct. 1–Nov. 7, 2020, and features the following AIA Virginia signature programming:

Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows
featuring Steven Holl, Kirsten Murray, Herve Descottes, David Lewis, and Kendall Buster

Architecture Exchange East
featuring Ed Mazria, Andrea Love, Joel Sanders, Kermit Baker, and many more

YAFCON 2020: The Empathic Architect
featuring a program curated by Virginia’s emerging professionals

Visions for Architecture
featuring a celebration of AIA Virginia’s Honors Awards and a live announcement of our Design Award winners.

Plus, other social events like firm roundtable discussions, facilitated lunch conversations, happy hours, and more. All tickets include access to our virtual exhibit hall.

As we’ve all seen recently — change is inevitable. Be prepared to design the future, instead of catching up to it.

Registration for Foresight 2020 open to all.

Tickets

There are a variety of ways to participate in the program – depending on your interest. Pick one element of the program or join us for everything. Pricing is below.

Visions for Architecture
Visions is free, but registration is required.

Foresight 2020 All Access Pass
This VIP ticket includes everything on the agenda.

  • AIA Member: $140
  • Assoc. AIA Member: $120
  • Non-member: $200
  • Student: $15

Architecture Exchange East
Includes all daily programming on Nov. 4 and Nov. 6 and admission to YAFCON (plus a few extras!)

  • AIA Member: $70
  • Assoc. AIA Member: $60
  • Non-member: $100
  • Student: $10

Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows
Includes all programming on Thursday, Nov. 5, plus a virtual tour of the ICA on Oct. 29

  • AIA Member: $70
  • Assoc. AIA Member: $60
  • Non-member: $100
  • Student: $10

YAFCON: The Empathic Architect
Includes daily programming Oct. 26-30. YAFCON is included free with your ArchEx admission, so there’s no need to register for it separately if you’re going to ArchEx. Use this ticket option if you’re only interested in attending YAFCON.

  • AIA Member: $50
  • Assoc. AIA Member: $30
  • Non-member: $100
  • Student: $10

Embracing Change: Signature Events Go Digital

AIA Virginia is pleased to announce that our signature programs for 2020 will be delivered virtually under the umbrella of Foresight 2020. You’ll get to experience Visions for Architecture, Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows, and Architecture Exchange East in exciting new ways.

While we’ll miss getting together in person, keeping you safe and healthy is more important. And, because that face-to-face interaction is so critical, we’ve invested in a virtual event platform that encourages connections and interactions.

What stays the same?

High-quality speakers and content. Our planning committees are committed to delivering the very best speakers and most compelling discussions.  They’ve already confirmed an incredible set of speakers for the Design Forum and the lineup at ArchEx is going to be just as impressive.

Exhibit Hall. We’ll still feature the latest products, services, and solutions from the industry’s best building product manufacturers in our virtual Exhibit Hall.

Networking and relationship building. We’ve built plenty of time into the schedule to engage with your colleagues.

What’s different?

No travel cost. You can login to the event wherever you happen to be on the day of the program.

Schedule. We’ve spread the programming out over a month.

Location. We’re planning to host everything in one virtual “spot.” After you register, you’ll download an app that will serve as our event lobby and hangout. It will work on any of your devices — your desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone.

Registration fees. It will cost less than ever before to attend. You can get a ticket to just one event, like the Design Forum or ArchEx, or get an all access pass to all of the Foresight 2020 programs.

And, Visions for Architecture will be free for everyone. We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

Registration for Foresight 2020 opens in August.

Foresight 2020: ArchEx, Design Forum & Visions

AIA Virginia is pleased to announce that our signature programs for 2020 will be delivered virtually under the umbrella of Foresight 2020.

You’ll get to experience Visions for Architecture, Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows, and Architecture Exchange East in exciting new ways.

Registration opens in August.

New Date for Virtual Design Forum Announced

The Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows has been rescheduled as a virtual event on Thursday, Nov. 5. Delivered under the umbrella of our month-long, online program Foresight 2020, the packed, one-day program will feature engaging talks by Steven Holl, Herve Descottes, Kirsten Murray, and David Lewis.

Through a series of conversations, the Design Forum showcases the work of talented individuals whose shared craft extends beyond the calculated and strictly quantitative into more holistic practice — whose leading-edge preoccupation with light and shadow extends the diversity of approaches to how designers seek beauty through form, space, and materiality.

Registration for Foresight 2020 will open in August. Virtual attendees can purchase a ticket to attend the Design Forum, Architecture Exchange East, Visions for Architecture, or an all-access pass to each of the Foresight 2020 programs.

Current Design Forum ticket holders have the option to transition their tickets to an all-access pass or obtain a refund for the difference.

A tremendous thanks to our sponsors. Without their support, this event wouldn’t be possible.

Platinum
Clark Nexsen

Gold
AIA Richmond
Nydree Flooring
School of Architecture + Design at Virginia Tech
UVA School of Architecture
William & Mary, Art & Art History

Sterling
American Hydrotech, Inc.
Moseley Architects
Quinn Evans

Silver
Ascent Engineering Group, Inc.
Glo Windows and Doors
Hanbury
Lighting Environments
Reader & Swartz Architects

Bronze
AIA Northern Virginia
Dunbar Milby Williams Pittman & Vaughan
Gulf Seaboard General Contractors, Inc.
Pella Windows of Virginia
Pyrok, Inc.
Sustainable Design Consulting, LLC

About the Speakers
These thought leaders come from diverse cultural and professional contexts, yet their work shares the power and nuance of how architects and allied professionals shape form through light. Through engaging the continuum of dim to bright, these designers shape our experience.

Steven Holl, FAIA (Steven Holl Architects | New York, NY)
Steven Holl is widely recognized for his ability to blend space and light with great contextual sensitivity and to utilize the unique qualities of each project to create a concept-driven design. He specializes in seamlessly integrating new projects into contexts with particular cultural and historic importance.

Kirsten Murray, FAIA (Olson Kundig | Seattle, WA)
Throughout her 30-year tenure at Olson Kundig, Kirsten Murray has created buildings and spaces that strengthen and enrich communities. Long inspired by Scandinavian modernist traditions, her architecture emphasizes warmth, natural materiality, tactility and refinement. By translating the innate conditions of a site—its nature, culture, topography and history—into built form, Murray’s designs create new interpretations of place that remain relevant over time.

Herve Descottes (L’Observitoire International, New York, NY)
In 1993, Hervé Descottes co-founded the lighting design firm L’Observatoire International in New York City after eight years of design practice in Paris, France. Descottes creates the lighting concepts for all projects designed by L’Observatoire, and oversees project development through project completion. He has been recognized numerous times by the lighting design and architectural community.

David J. Lewis, AIA (LTL Architects, New York, NY)
David Lewis is founding principal of LTL Architects, a design intensive architecture firm founded in 1997 with Paul Lewis and Marc Tsurumaki, located in New York City. LTL Architects develops solutions that work within project constraints to inform the design trajectory, exploring opportunistic overlaps between space, program, form, budget, and materials.

This is 2020

Happy 2020! I hope that your year is off to a great start!

I’m very excited about serving as your AIA Virginia president this year. I look forward to working closely with our EVP, Corey Clayborne, his stellar staff of Rhea, Cathy, Keesha, and Judy, and my fellow Board members to accomplish many things in 2020.

Beth Reader, FAIA

I’ve been active in the AIA since I joined in 1991 and am co-founder and principal at Reader & Swartz Architects in Winchester.

Some of the items I’m looking forward to us accomplishing, as a team, in the key areas of governance, education, outreach, advocacy, and member services are:

  • Adopting our Strategic Plan in early 2020. Our new Strategic Plan will act as our roadmap and will guide our Board of Director’s and staff’s work over the next three years.
  • Hosting our always thought-provoking, biennial Design Forum, which is one of my favorite AIA Virginia events. This year’s forum will be held in March in Richmond and will feature Steven Holl as our keynote speaker. Registration is now open!
  • Exploring ways to invigorate and improve our members’ annual Architecture Exchange East experiences. We are always working to enhance the value of this signature event, so if you have any suggestions please send them my way.
  • Launching a digital Inform magazine. It’s been several years since we published a hard copy of Inform, and I’ve missed keeping up with all of the beautiful projects being built around the Commonwealth.
  • Investing in the future of our young professionals by helping our Associate members gain access to ARE prep materials.
  • Advocating for the establishment of a statute of limitations for state projects.
  • Strengthening our connections to AIAS in our universities.
  • Exploring the creation of a new Virginia chapter of NOMA.

Again, I am looking forward to working with the team and our members on these and many more items. If you’d like to share your input, feel free to reach out to me at beth@readerswartz.com

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and professionally fulfilling 2020!

Beth

Design Forum Explores Shadows, Craft and Materiality

Junichiro Tanizaki, in his book In Praise of Shadows writes, “In darkness, immutable tranquility holds sway.” Designers integrate this interplay of light, color, and shadow in the spaces they imagine — navigating the clarity that light brings alongside the ephemeral mystery of the shadows.

Inspired by this 73-page homage to “well-placed darkness,” the fourteenth biennial Virginia Design Forum: In Praise of Shadows embraces this theme through an exploration of craft and materiality.

The program takes place on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020 and will be presented in collaboration with Architecture Exchange East as part of our FORESIGHT 2020 platform of programming.

Through a series of conversations, the Design Forum showcases the work of talented individuals whose shared craft extends beyond the calculated and strictly quantitative into more holistic practice — whose leading-edge preoccupation with light and shadow extends the diversity of approaches to how designers seek beauty through form, space, and materiality.

The work of the speakers embodies those essential connections.

About the Speakers
These thought leaders come from diverse cultural and professional contexts, yet their work shares the power and nuance of how architects and allied professionals shape form through light. Through engaging the continuum of dim to bright, these designers shape our experience.

Steven Holl, FAIA (Steven Holl Architects | New York, NY)
Steven Holl is widely recognized for his ability to blend space and light with great contextual sensitivity and to utilize the unique qualities of each project to create a concept-driven design. He specializes in seamlessly integrating new projects into contexts with particular cultural and historic importance.

Kirsten Murray, FAIA (Olson Kundig | Seattle, WA)
Throughout her 30-year tenure at Olson Kundig, Kirsten Murray has created buildings and spaces that strengthen and enrich communities. Long inspired by Scandinavian modernist traditions, her architecture emphasizes warmth, natural materiality, tactility and refinement. By translating the innate conditions of a site—its nature, culture, topography and history—into built form, Murray’s designs create new interpretations of place that remain relevant over time.

Herve Descottes (L’Observitoire International, New York, NY)
In 1993, Hervé Descottes co-founded the lighting design firm L’Observatoire International in New York City after eight years of design practice in Paris, France. Descottes creates the lighting concepts for all projects designed by L’Observatoire, and oversees project development through project completion. He has been recognized numerous times by the lighting design and architectural community.

David J. Lewis, AIA (LTL Architects, New York, NY)
David Lewis is founding principal of LTL Architects, a design intensive architecture firm founded in 1997 with Paul Lewis and Marc Tsurumaki, located in New York City. LTL Architects develops solutions that work within project constraints to inform the design trajectory, exploring opportunistic overlaps between space, program, form, budget, and materials.

The Design Forum is generously sponsored by:

Platinum
Clark Nexsen

Gold
AIA Richmond
Nydree Flooring
School of Architecture + Design at Virginia Tech
UVA School of Architecture
William & Mary, Art & Art History

Sterling
American Hydrotech, Inc.
Moseley Architects
Quinn Evans

Silver
Ascent Engineering Group, Inc.
Glo Windows and Doors
Hanbury
Lighting Environments
Reader & Swartz Architects

Bronze
AIA Northern Virginia
Dunbar Milby Williams Pittman & Vaughan
Gulf Seaboard General Contractors, Inc.
Pella Windows of Virginia
Pyrok, Inc.
Sustainable Design Consulting, LLC

Registration

Tickets sales will reopen when registration for Architecture Exchange East launches in September.

Earn up to 7 AIA/CES learning units.

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Contact Judy Cheadle.

Reflections: Design Forum XIII

BLUR: The Shifting Boundaries between Art, Technology, and Architecture… and why they matter for the practice of the future.

Virginia Design Forum XIII | April 6-7, 2018 | Taubman Museum of Art

By Ed Ford, AIA

It was, as Michael Gibson reminded us, the thirteenth such occasion since the first Design Forum held in Hot Springs in 1994, a series of events that has brought us a widely diverse group of presenters in its 24-year history. This year’s theme was BLUR, in this case the blurring of boundaries between disciplines. At a time when art’s traditional connection to architecture seems to be waning in some quarters, it gratifying to see it was very much alive in the work presented in Roanoke. Jack Davis’s Introduction elaborated on the theme by reminding us of an old argument — Richards Serra’s contention that architecture can never be art and Harry Seidler’s belief that it cannot be anything else. All of this year’s presenters are involved in redefining, erasing and transgressing the definitions of and boundaries of architecture, art, design and science — of those things which we call disciplines, which as Jack defined them, are those things that require craft, skill, and philosophy.

An important connection was made later in the program by Doris Kim Sung who reminded us that as Maurice Merleau-Ponty said, we learn through experience and not intellect, and the interplay of the perceptual and the “real” was a repeating theme over the course of the Forum. Much of the work dealt with creative tensions between real space and perceived space or the idea of space at all. But while much of the work both in ideological origin and execution is both driven and inspired by the current acceleration of technological change, many saw their work growing out of longstanding art traditions that they were extending into the digital realm. Many presenters began their careers in other disciplines, often traditional ones, whose outlook had informed their architectural work. Space and form defined by light was a common theme, but at the same time, some of the most compelling projects were made from traditional materials and the work presented ranged from forms of pure light to meticulously joined wood to apparently jointless masonry structures.

 

Eric Howeler

Eric Höweler, AIA, of Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Harvard GSD

Eric Höweler in his keynote explained that he sees his firm as working across media — trespassing and bootlegging — defining architecture in the broadest of media. Much of their work deals with public space but Eric notes, “the notion of public and private has been fundamentally altered by a technologically expanded sense of commons that extends across media formats and channels,” Times Square being an obvious example.

Their most interactive project and least conventional in terms of the traditional tools of architecture is probably “Swing Time,” an interactive playscape in a park near the Boston Convention Center that takes the classic park swing into new territory. It is composed of twenty illuminated ring-shaped swings, large circular halos made of welded polypropylene with internal LED lighting controllers that change the illumination depending on the frequency and intensity of their movement. When stationary they emit a soft constant light. When the swings are moving the colors change from color and increase in intensity.

At the same time, some of their most compelling projects proved to be the least digital, such as a reinterpretation of the Chinese courtyard typology-the Skycourts housing and office complex in Chengdu, China, and the beautifully contrasting Corten and stone walls of the exterior.

The Collier Memorial is also executed in more conventional architecture materials but used in a technologiacally innovative way. The Memorial marks the site on MIT’s campus where a police officer was killed in the aftermath of the 2013 Marathon bombing. The Memorial, formed by a series of interlocking walls, takes the form of both a star and an open hand embodying the concept of “strength through unity.” It is composed of thirty-two blocks of granite that form a five-way stone vault. Each block supports the other to create a covered space.  A mortarless, zero-tolerance stone structure, it requires the perfect joinery of thirty-two stone blocks to transfer loads in pure compression from stone to stone.

 

Doris Kim Sung

Doris Kim Sung, dO|Su Studio Architecture, University of Southern California, 

While Doris is very much an artist, her education began with the study of biology and her process is based on her understanding of the biological world, such as the ways termite mounds accommodate themselves to thermal changes. Her work is very much focused on materials, what she calls “Metal that Breathes” or more broadly “Taming Smart Materials to Behave.” Her current focus is on thermal bimetals, a material that expands and contracts with temperature swings — the basic principle of a thermostat. Her work includes multiple iterations of these small units in multiple types of assemblies that can be used as sun shades, privacy screens and ventilation systems that change automatically with temperature, light and other climate variations without the use of electricity. Despite the mechanical characteristics of these devices, she sees them in an organic way — what she calls the skin of architecture. This typically takes the form of various curtain wall configurations in combination with glass, but other projects go beyond the building skin to become free standing structures-crustaceans. “Bloom,” an installation at the Materials and Application Gallery in Los Angeles is a large freestanding vortex composed of hyperbolic paraboloids. It is also constructed of smart thermobimetal and as the sun heats the surface it opens to ventilates that areas of the shell.

 

Nathan King

Nathan King, Lead Research Strategist at the Autodesk BUILD Space

 Nathan King is well known to many of us from his pioneering robotics work during his time at Virginia Tech in projects such as the “Breathe Wall.” Nathan’s primary focus at present is his work as lead Research Strategist at the Autodesk BUILD Space. He began his career as a painter and his work, however technologically driven, still informed by a painter’s sensibility. To him, a brush and a robot are both tools. Much of his work employs traditional materials — wood and steel — but with radical fabrication techniques, particularly robotics. The Lo-Fab (locally fabricated), Pavilion on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, Massachusetts was created by Virginia Tech faculty and students working with the MASS Design Group. It is a robotically fabricated structure something like a dome that requires a variety of tapered wood struts and multi-flanged steel connectors. It is a project that demonstrates not just the technical sophistication of robotics, but that it is a technology that can be used not just to hide joints but to beautifully articulate them.

 

David Freeland

David Freeland, FreelandBuck, Los Angeles, Sci Arc 

Like Nathan and Rafik, David sees his firm’s work grounded in certain traditional art forms, an extension of the trompe-l’oeil spaces of history such as the ceiling of the church of St. Ignatius in Rome. This however is only one aspect of the blurring of the real and the representational in their work. Also like Rafik and Eric, they work with light and illusion but in a far more literal way, exploring the boundaries of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional as well as blurring scales and types of representation in the process.  David notes that, “The Renaissance tradition of Trompe l’oeil ceilings uses the illusionary depth of perspective to project what is not there; a dome that was never built or an attic filled with angels.” All of their work is representative, but with varying levels of representation.

Their offices for Hungry Man Productions is a project closer to traditional architecture — a series of cubicles that creates an environment and flexible working configurations. Some of the cubicles are functional. Some are purely representational. They are filled with furniture, some of which is also real and some of which that is not.

“Out of the Picture” is their proposed installation for the MoMA 2018 PS 1, Young Architects Program Competition. The streets and facades of Long Island City surrounding the PS1 courtyard are both literally and scenographically projected on to a series of vertical surfaces in the courtyard.

Parallax Gap” is their competition-winning installation at the Smithsonian and makes the strongest connection to the great illusionist ceilings of historyThe installation is a “ceiling” hung in the Grand Salon of the Renwick Gallery.  It is a collage of domed, coffered and beamed roofs of familiar American buildings-from Federal Hall in New York to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco-in greatly reduced size, are color printed onto plastic but are also given real three-dimensional configurations.

 

Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol, Director UCLA Department of Design Media Arts

Refik Anadol is a media artist and a recipient of a Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award. Refik brings his boundless energy and enthusiasm to a self-invented profession that defies categorization. It is architecture but it is architecture of light and images. But Refik is, in his own way, a traditionalist. Like others he sees his work connected to the traditions of art, in this case modernist ones — to James Turrell, Dan Flavin, and the Light + Space movement of the 1970s — and the influence of Turrell is apparent in his “Cube” project.

Much of Rafik’s current work involves what he calls “Making data visible” by means of parametric data sculptures. The lobby of an SOM office building in San Francisco is the location of his “SF data” project a 40-foot-wide screen with constantly changing images-a series of “data sculptures” based on a publicly-available data. He explains, “Through sensors, databases, information is collect on the city: sound, light, air quality, acoustics, human movement, ecological dimensions, social preferences. The installation uses the public dataset, as well as social network data, which are translated into images. Often, this materializes as trompe-l’œil illusions that play with the depth of the screen.” Some images architecture-specific. Some are quite concrete. Others are nebulous.

His most conspicuous and most ambitious work is his sound light/video/installation at Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Music is converted into digital imagery, breaking the art/ architecture boundaries in a number of ways. “The dynamic visual program uses custom-built algorithmic sound analysis to listen and respond to the music in real time, using architecture as a canvas and light as a material. Additionally, the movements of the conductor, are captured by Microsoft Kinect hardware and 3-D depth camera analysis to inform the visuals displayed.”

Doris Kim Sung, David Freeland, Refik Anadol, Nathan King

We closed with a Panel Discussion speculating on the variety of ways designers can cross these boundaries whether in theoretical or practical realms.