AIA Executive Vice President/CEO Norman L. Koonce, FAIA, welcomed thousands of architects, their friends, and colleagues to the 136th annual AIA National Convention in Chicago June 10. Noting that the theme of the opening day was “Learn,” Koonce said that 500 of the 1,025 architects newly licensed in the past year had taken up the AIA’s offer of complimentary registration to the convention. Moreover, he said, “young and old, we have all come to Chicago to learn, and only through a culture of sharing does true power unfold.” As we gather to learn from each other and the great city of Chicago itself, Koonce invited all to consider the AIA the “generator and wide open portal of knowledge.”

Learn, Celebrate, Dream
AIA President Eugene C. Hopkins, FAIA, told the group that this year’s convention theme, “Learn, Celebrate, Dream,” has almost become a mantra for him through the event’s two years of preparation. As Hopkins finds himself caught up in the convention’s “wonderful gridlock of pumped-up architects,” Chicago is proving to be the perfect setting for the theme. “Chicago makes the case for diversity,” Hopkins said, citing the city’s wonderful architectural mix of Burnham, Sullivan, Wright, Mies, and Jahn.

The greening of Chi-town
“Welcome to our great city!” Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley told the architects. “We are a city that takes architecture seriously … and we continue to push the envelope of architecture.” Daley also expressed fondness for the diversity of Chicago’s architecture and said that many of its faces were showing up in the city’s intensified efforts to make itself the greenest city in the country. Elements of the program include city grants to restore some 80,000 pre-WWII bungalows with energy-sustaining strategies, and one million square feet of green roofs, including the one on City Hall. The mayor explained that the strategies all are part of Chicago’s new energy standards, certified by the U.S. Green Buildings Council, in effect for all public buildings. He expressed hope that private buildings will soon follow suit and thanked architects for their “important role in shaping cities and determining quality of life.” The audience responded to Mayor Daley’s remarks with a standing ovation.

Honors
Mayor Daley also asked the audience for a moment of silence to honor former President Ronald Reagan, who passed away June 5. Likewise, Hopkins asked for a moment of silence to honor one of our own, 1989 AIA President Benjamin E. Brewer Jr., FAIA, who passed away December 17, 2003.

On a happier note, Hopkins also presented a presidential citation to film maker Nathaniel Kahn, in appreciation for his movie My Architect: A Son’s Journey, which details his quest to discover his father, Louis Kahn, through Lou’s magnificent buildings. Of the film, Hopkins said, “it is not simply a love letter; it is a moving, often funny embrace of the profession.” Kahn expressed his great thanks for the honor and said that one of the benefits of making My Architect was that he “got to learn a great deal, including a little bit about what you do.” His father, he said, “believed that architecture could change the world.” And it’s true that what architects do “is so very important—you create the foundation of the world.”

President Hopkins also had the privilege of presenting the 2004 Edward C. Kemper Award to Robert A. Odermatt, FAIA, The Odermatt Group, Berkeley, Calif. The award, namesake of the first executive director of the Institute, honors individuals who give outstanding service to the profession through the AIA. Hopkins presented Odermatt as “a role model for the profession.” Odermatt, in turn, expressed his gratitude, saying he was “proud to be an architect and proud to be in Chicago, celebrating our profession.” He thanked his many friends for this special award from his peers and offered special gratitude to his wife, Diana.

Reflections of a White City
Norbert Young, FAIA, president of McGraw Hill Construction, sponsors of the convention’s theme sessions, introduced keynote speaker Erik Larson, known to many in the audience as author of The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Mayhem at the Fair That Changed America. Larson transported the audience back to the turn of the century (the nineteenth to twentieth century, that is), to the days of Daniel Burnham and friends as they created the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in record time and sometimes against incredible odds. (While the exposition is the “White City,” the “Devil” in the book’s title refers to H.H. Holmes, a serial murderer who used the world’s fair to lure many of his victims to Chicago and his specially constructed hotel. Larson tells the parallel tales of Holmes and Burnham as antipodes of the time.)

Larson made the audience laugh with irreverent tales of the many products that came out of the exposition—from Juicy Fruit gum to zippers to Shredded Wheat—as well as how the architects strove for a way to “out-Eiffel Eiffel” by creating an engineering feat grander than the Eiffel Tower, which graced the Paris Exposition a decade before. The hugely successful solution proved to be George Washington Ferris’s 250-foot-tall Ferris Wheel.

Finally, the author put forth his take on the “Sullivan/Burnham controversy,” that is, Sullivan’s accusation that Burnham’s selection of the Classic style for the exposition would set “modern” architecture back for a century. Larson contended that it is odd that Sullivan took part in the design and did not protest the use of Classicism until years after the fair was over. Larson wondered if professional jealousy played a role in the accusation. If we follow Sullivan’s premise, he said, it means that it was the exposition’s great success that set architecture back, because people made some 28 million visits to take in its glory.

Larson claims instead that the exposition elevated interest in architecture among the public. Typically, the architectural Court of Honor was deemed the most striking feature of the fair. He reminded the audience that the World Columbian Exposition also paved the way for the City Beautiful Movement still influencing our urban centers today. Perhaps most noticeable, Larson concluded, is Chicago itself, where Burnham’s plan for the Lakeshore still reigns, and, in truth, “set cities forward for a hundred years.”

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