Monday, September 28, 2009

AIA Women Leadership Summit

On September 25-26th I went to the AIA Women Leadship Summit, which was held in Chicago. It was a terrific and inspiring event!!! One amazing woman I heard speak was Beverly Willis, architect and co-founder of the National Building Museum, who has started the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which has a goal to expand the knowledge about and recognition of women's contributions to architecture. She shared with us the film "A Girl is a Fellow Here" which spoke about 6 of the 100 women who worked in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Finalists for Humanitarian Innovation

Thanks to Architecture for Humanity's email newsletter I leant about the Curry Stone Design Prize Finalists... some of which I found to be doing interesting work!This is a school in Bangladesh built with natural building materials designed by Anna Heringer.
“People are becoming interested now in finding their own solutions, not just copying the West,” said Heringer, who currently lectures at University of Art and Design Linz and is completing doctorate studies at the Technische Universität München. “What I hope is that we’ll be able to set a trend in a fresh and regional architectural style that motivates people to bring their traditional construction methods.”
Another was The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins, which speaks to saving the world by acting local.
“Transition” is centered on the idea of building resilience to crisis by “unlocking the collective genius of the community,” in Hopkins words. The first Transition Town developed in 2006 in Totnes, England, where local residents, led by Hopkins, joined together to grow more local food in community gardens, plan more pedestrian- and bike-friendly streets, lower their energy use, and even create their own local currency to encourage spending and investment in the local economy.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Emilio Caravatti


Emilio Caravatti - looks like an Italian architect doing interesting work both here and abroad (mostly in Africa)... hope to hear him speak next week and then I can write more.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Schools for Children of the World

'I think architecture in general is all about serving people. I don’t care whether it’s in your regular practice or pro bono work. In my opinion, architecture is about maximizing facilities to allow your clients to achieve their goals. If you can focus on wanting to help others and looking at things from their perspective, I think that’s where the greatest value is. That’s really where your focus needs to be.' Charles Newman, AIA

Here's an article from this week's AIA newsletter on an inspiring architect and cofounder of the nonprofit Schools for Children of the World (SCW).