by Kate Schwennsen, FAIA

The AIA’s first annual meeting was held in New York City. The year was 1867. I doubt the attendees were much concerned with LUs, tours, or having enough food and drink at the host chapter party. After all, just three years earlier the AIA’s total membership was 35. Of course I’m not including the Honorary Members, of which there were 12, 7 of whom lived in Europe. So I don’t think hotels, transportation, or meeting space were topics over which much ink was spilled.

The attraction of intimacy notwithstanding, there was none of the trappings of a modern AIA Convention: no product Expo, no starchitects, no “Dining by Design,” no Knowledge Communities, and no awards programs. Yet they came. Why?

“A source of public improvement and reform”
Well, there was the matter of voting on a constitution, the AIA’s first. This is how Richard Upjohn, the AIA’s founder and first president, saw the work before them: “Though the Institute is established for the pursuit and communication of such knowledge as is conducive to the development of architecture, it will nevertheless, it is hoped, be a source of public improvement and reform, beyond the mere scientific and artistic limits of the pursuit, and thus be, in no slight degree, a helper of civilization . . . In this view of our American Institute of Architects, we see it to be no mean contributor of good to our fellow-citizens.”

When you sit back and think about it for a moment, this is an extraordinary statement. It lays out values and priorities that have remained an essential part of our legacy as a professional society and our cultural DNA as a profession.

Let’s rewind the tape. First, Upjohn is saying that without question the AIA’s reason for being is to pursue and share knowledge that will advance architecture. That’s a given. No problem there. Every professional society does that.

But then he goes on with an unusual “nevertheless,” a transition that lays out the rules for this pursuit not as an end in itself, but a means to an end. What is that end? Public improvement and reform. Nor does he leave it at that. Look how the rest of that long sentence unspools: Upjohn drops the word “mere” like a cement block in front of “scientific” and “artistic.” Clearly, for President Upjohn, science without a practical application and art for its own sake were not options for AIA members. Instead, he argues that the art and science of architecture have value to the degree they are placed at the service of public improvement and reform.

Men on a mission
So much for the myth of the AIA as a stuffy old boys club devoted to protectionism and self interest. These were men on a mission—improve and reform, helpers of civilization.

In case anyone in the audience missed the message, Upjohn, like a good preacher, hammers in the point yet again: the purpose, he says, of their work as individual AIA members and the collective mission of the AIA were to be “no mean contributor of good to our fellow-citizens.”

(Please note that Upjohn did not say “fellow men.” He may have had men in mind, but I would like to think, and his words give me license to believe, he was a leader way ahead of his time who had a broad view of inclusiveness.)

However, to return to the larger point. How much easier it would have been on all of us if President Upjohn had thought twice and edited out all these words about doing good by ones fellow citizens. If he had just stopped at the uniting in fellowship (Article II of the proposed Constitution) and the sharing of knowledge of the art and science of architecture, we, his successors, could have happily marveled at our creativity and ingenuity in both areas. In fact, for some that is quite enough.

Moral imperatives
But Upjohn knew precisely what he was doing, and ever since we have been struggling to live up to the moral imperative of his words.

Nearly 140 years stand between that first convention in New York City and the national convention in June on the other side of the continent in Los Angeles. In the planning stage for over two years, this event is likely to draw something on the order of 23,000 registrants. Upjohn and his colleagues would have been astounded, both by the crowd and Los Angeles.

Yet, I would like to think, certainly I hope, that after thumbing through the over 100 pages of this year’s Convention Guide, after straining their eyes over the bewildering array of seminars, break-out sessions, caucuses, tours, and the layout of the AIAExpo exhibit floor, they would find at the core a familiar theme—a continuing commitment to that moral imperative to public improvement and reform.

After all, what is the purpose of this emphasis on innovation, engagement, and inspiration—our convention theme—if not to collaborate with our clients and the public to move closer to a vision of safer, more productive, more sustainable, and beautiful buildings and communities? Yes, there will be the fellowship and all those learning units. There will be the tours of the Getty and the Disney Concert Hall. But the real take-home that counts will be whatever equips us to be helpers of civilization, which Upjohn defined for us 139 years ago: “To be no mean contributors of good to our fellow-citizens.”

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