AIArchitect

More and more, it seems, AIA members are discovering the interactive devices that are now part of AIArchitect, including the Taking Care of Business feature, the weekly poll, and this blog. It’s already been very valuable for us, the editors.

Most particularly, we are interested in what draws reader interest, which we can monitor by watching the click-through numbers. For instance, interesting and innovative design—especially by well-recognized firms—draws large numbers of readers. Stories about emerging professionals do particularly well for some reason. And, we’ve found, practical tips on office behavior and personnel management (such as this week’s Five Steps to Delegating with Authority) get a lot of clicks.

We’re also learning that members seem to like the occasional chance to communicate with one another through the AIArchitect features mentioned in the first sentence above. Not surprisingly, many of the notes we get are vituperative. (Who takes the time to write a note if there isn’t a lot of powerful emotion involved, anyway? Very few.)

What we’d like to hear about this week, if you’re willing to share, is whether you the reader get value out of these informal mini-forums. Click on the “Comments” link below and tell us.

What do you think?

by Kelly Pickard
Chair, AIA Sustainable Operations Task Force

This week, the editors of the Kiplinger Letter talk about new technology that they say will make coal into a clean fuel alternative by stripping out the pollutants before the purified fuel is fed into turbine-turning burners. They say this will make even high-sulfur coal into a low-emission generator of power, giving us abundant domestic power until solar, wind, geothermal, and other non-hydrocarbon sources can be brought online by 2030.

Coal continues to be a dirty word to most advocates of reduced carbon emissions. The notion of high-sulfur coal as a clean source of fuel is about as credible to one side of the environmentalism debate as the notion of human-caused global warming is to the other.

This comes at a time when the President Bush, on May 31, announced a new direction. He wishes to initiate talks with the 15 nations that account for 80 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, he has said. (Take note: the mere connection of carbon emissions to global warming is a major new twist in Administration policy.)

Are these moves ahead or sideways with regard to the AIA’s stated goal of zero carbon emissions from new buildings and major renovations by 2030? The president promises a move forward, but with talks that wouldn’t start for at least 10 years. Even more encouraging, then, are the 522 U.S. mayors who have agreed to adhere to the Kyoto Standards in their own municipalities. Moreover, working with the AIA last year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors agreed to support the even more aggressive 2030 Challenge.

Here at the AIA national component headquarters, we have created a task force to examine resource efficiency locally—within this building. We will be considering everything from super-insulation, shading systems, and operable windows to geothermal, solar, and water reclamation. And we are committed to targets consistent with the 2030 Challenge.

Technology will be part of the solution to maintaining a livable ecosystem. (Maybe clean coal will be a reality.) Equally important is self-discipline. And in that regard, AIA architects have been in the lead.

There is no magic bullet. Rebalancing Earth’s eco-librium will take hard work. We believe that by starting now, with specific target goals, the long-term benefits will be well worth the effort.

What do you think?

Seeking to close what they call the Hummer Tax Loophole, four U.S. representatives introduced legislation June 14 that would stop a tax write-off of up to $25,000 for small businesses buying SUVs weighing more than three tons.

“These are vehicles that small business owners across the country depend on for their way of life,” said Charles Territo, of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “This effort is an assault on the hardworking men and women who rely on these types of vehicles for a living.”

Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Ed Markey, Rahm Emanuel, and Allison Schwartz disagree and introduced H.R. 2715, now being considered in the House. The tax code allows small-business tax breaks as legitimate expenses, not luxury write-offs, Blumenauer explains. In 1984, when a 6,000-pound cap was set, three-ton luxury vehicles were rare. Now they aren’t. Revising that weight-cap provision, Blumenauer suggests, means “businesses will no longer have an incentive to buy the biggest, most gas guzzling SUV on the market. Legislative language and regulations would guarantee that the limitation not apply to trucks or vans used for legitimate business purposes.”

AIArchitect Contributing Editor Michael J. Crosbie, AIA, was ahead of that curve when he opined in his 2007 New Year’s Resolutions for architects, item 12:
SUV RIP. Stop driving that ridiculous SUV. An architect should not be caught dead in one of the most environmentally destructive vehicles known to man. Sell it and buy something fuel efficient and less dangerous, and improve your chances of being here in 2008!

What do you think?

(And if you’ve read down this far, you deserve a reward, speaking of Mike Crosbie. Take a look at his article earlier this week on Philip Johnson’s Glass House estate, which just opened as a museum.)

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards passed a resolution June 25 at its annual meeting that could encourage more architecture graduates to hold to their licensure track. And, in the long term, if graduates can immediately take parts of the ARE, might that also shift our concept of “architect”?

The debate has been raging for years about the definition of who can rightfully call themselves architect. Although, in the U.S., this is ultimately the realm of each professional licensing jurisdiction, there are other arguments at play, and no doubt you’ve heard them before:

• “I did my internship and passed the ARE, that’s one reason being an architect means so much to me. It shouldn’t be any easier for the ones leaving school now.”
• “Being an architect is a state of mind; a way of looking at the world and at problem solving. I have my professional degree. I should be able to call myself an architect.”
• “Graduates today think that if they can work a CAD program, they can design a building. It takes much more understanding of how a building works and goes together to be able to serve the public health, safety, and welfare—to be an architect.”
• “You call a medical school graduate a doctor, and law school graduates who pass the bar right after school are lawyers. Why not have a similar system within architecture?”

One conundrum driving the debate now is a perception that too many architecture graduates are not going on to licensure, weakening the profession. The retort is that the current typical sequence—education, IDP, then ARE—offers too many disconnects that derail interns from the licensure track. Now, the registration boards have agreed that even the jurisdictions that adopt NCARB provisions whole shall choose their own timing for graduates to take certain parts of the ARE.

Will it give interns a higher sense of belonging to the profession if they have passed some of the ARE straight out of school? Will licensing boards revisit regulations on who may use the title “architect”? Ultimately, is this a meaningful direction for strengthening the profession?

What do you think?