AIArchitect

In this week’s book review of Sustainable Healthcare Architecture, Managing Editor Stephanie Stubbs points out that “‘AIAs’ abound among the essays, but so do RNs, AICPs, PEs, LEED-APs, PhDs, and an MD or two. Are we listening to each other? Are these remarkable buildings the result?”

Given the complexity of projects and project management, does the architect bring the most value to the client as the integrator/facilitator? As project point person, is that the best position for the person who certifies for payment and is responsible for contractor requests for information?

What do you think?

(And take a look at this week's letters to the editor for additional insights on this topic from your colleagues.)

There have been many levels of checks and balances the profession of architecture has assembled to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. Among them is a minimum standard of education as defined by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). This year, as Jonathan Matthew Taylor, Assoc. AIA, LEED-AP, explains this week, NAAB will be re-examining its accreditation criteria, as the organization does every five years or so.

In conjunction with the AIA and other collateral organizations representing students, faculty, and registration boards, NAAB will be looking into ways to incorporate learning requirements for such issues as collaboration, business insight, building information modeling, and communications skills within the limited timeframe of acquiring a professional degree.

At the same time, the U.S. collateral organizations are working through the International Union of Architects to establish reciprocal standards for practicing architects. Somewhere down the road, there may be a global accreditation standard for architecture education.

But should an education at an accredited school of architecture be the only path to the privilege of taking the architectural registration examination? Some jurisdictions recognize the more traditional internship, recognizing the value of on-the-job learning. Some recognize architecture education programs that have not received accreditation, yet still offer a high-quality educational experience.

What do you think?

by Stephanie Stubbs, Assoc. AIA, LEED-AP

Reading Zach Mortice’s article about the restoration of Paul Rudolph’s Yale Art and Architecture building brought me back to the ’70s, architecture school at SUNY Buffalo, and our (now seemingly ad nauseum) late-night debates in the studio about the merits and foibles of Brutalism, of Rudolph’s parti, and involvement of users in the design process. Though far from proven, we took it as gospel that disgruntled architecture students set fire to a space they could not abide. (You could watch eyes flicking from corner to corner of our own space.) At that time, when everyone was protesting something, it seemed not too far-fetched, and, in some perverse Fountainhead-like way, almost okay to attempt to wipe out offending space. The cognitive dissonance set in when we discovered, to a person, we all admired the architect and the design of the building.

The point is, Yale Arts and Architecture had us talking capital-A architecture among ourselves. It inspired us to cut out and pile into someone’s old car one dreary afternoon for a 20-mile pilgrimage to see Rudolph’s Niagara Central Library, newer than Yale and on the same Brutalist order. We loved that one, too. Other buildings in our own back yard that had the same electrifying effect on us were classics and a lot older—Sullivan’s Prudential Building, Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House, as well as the ghost of the Larkin Building. Then came along Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building design …

Those student-only debates are cherished memories, and the buildings that generated them are special friends.

Which buildings inspired you and your fellow architecture students?

by Zach Mortice

If I peek my head, furtively, meerkat-like, over my cube at AIA national headquarters in Washington, I can catch a glimpse of the Robert Mill’s Washington Monument and William Thornton’s Octagon building architecture museum. In some ways, it’s a representative view of Washington: a monument and a museum, both very old and laden with history. Washington has traditionally resisted Modernism, and architecture here is often broad and historical. Perhaps the city’s best know contemporary Modernist buildings are Smithsonian museums—I.M. Pei’s East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Gyo Obata’s National Air and Space Museum, and Gordon Bunshaft’s Hirshhorn Museum. They were all built in the 1970s.

Certainly, there are exceptions to this. The Shakespeare Theater Company’s Sidney Harman Hall is one. The National Museum of the American Indian is establishing itself as well-loved addition to the National Mall—a building that succinctly telegraphs its function and purpose with grace from hundreds of yards away. The new Foster and Partners courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is amazing, but its success largely rests with how it interacts with a 170-year-old building. My story about Suman Sorg’s new condos took me into a neighborhood where contemporary Modernism is crowding out traditional forms.

But, by and large, the city is still waiting for a sharp, brash contemporary icon that demands attention to come along—what Gehry’s addition to the Corcoran should have been—what the Moshe Safdie National Health Museum could be.

Ed Mazria, FAIA, founder of Architecture 2030, held his second Web conference “teach in” January 30. His message is constant even as the global atmospheric ppm of carbon dioxide, temperatures, and sea levels rise. Stop burning coal and start converting to solar and other renewable power sources, he says. Even if you are on board, do you think there can be a real shift to wind power, or is he tilting at windmills?

Here in the Mid-Atlantic region, adjacent to some of the world’s most prolific coal sources, the mantra for years has been: Coal is king, and the U.S. can be self-sufficient in energy because we have so much of it. This is precisely Mazria’s point. He posits that if we use up all of the available petroleum and natural gas resources on Earth, we still couldn’t reach the tipping point scientists project at which the polar ice caps will melt and inundate great swaths of our world’s heavily populated coastal areas. Only if we continue to burn our massive reserves of coal will we convert enough of the hydrocarbons stored over millions of years into greenhouse gasses potent enough to change our world ineffably.

As a species, though, humans are not known for our willingness to accept uncomfortable change even if we can see a reasonable likelihood of future threat. Nonetheless, the AIA has indeed taken many serious steps toward addressing the concerns raised by Mazria. Is it too much too soon, too little too late, or the right, professionally responsible path toward protecting the public health, safety, and welfare?