Summary: This week, readers sound off on both sides of the AIA’s proposed stimulus plan, the Honor Awards for Interior Architecture, our last week’s Doer’s Profile and why women don’t stay in architecture, and the weekly poll.

Re: AIA Develops Plan to Stimulate Economy and Create 1.6 Million Jobs in Building Sector

As usual, the AIA can be counted on to provide intelligent direction in chaotic times. Below are a few suggestions that may be worth considering.
 
I hope that careful attention will be paid to streamlining the typical government procurement process. If not, it could take months or years before RFQs begin to flow and still more weeks and months before architects begin to feel any relief. Perhaps the AIA could organize a WPA style corps of unemployed or underemployed professionals to perform energy audits of existing buildings and suggest improvements. These could form the basis of applications for stimulus money and RFQs for professional services.
 
It is important that the politicians apply the Green Buildings concept to state and local, public and private buildings as you have proposed. I’ve heard Mr. Obama and other politicians say they will fund green improvements to Federal Buildings. Federal buildings are already pretty green, so little progress will be made if the program is not much wider in scope.
 
Thanks for taking the lead in these important issues.

—Douglas Sangster, AIA
Associate, R. Miller Architecture Inc. 
Winter Park, Fla.

With respect to the AIA plan to jump-starting the economy with a focus on a federal program for building for energy efficiency, it seems to me, given the huge scale of American megalopolitan conurbations, the hundreds of thousands of existing buildings of all types, age, and condition, and the aging and outsized infrastructural conditions servicing them, that it is a kind of hubris to assume that the environment will give us time to "repair" our cities. This mind set, in the face of massive pollution and global warming, is little more than a secular reiteration of a religious theme: namely, that human beings have an entitlement to existence, and that good intentions will renew the franchise.
 
For all we know, however, time may be short; half-measures may not suffice; the social dislocations and political distraction of urban insufficiency aside, the industrial and populous cities of the world are the major engines of environmental destruction. They have grown largely topsy-turvy, and are always behind the curve with respect to technical innovation and infrastructural efficiency, not to mention population control and extractive demand for natural resources. Half measures will not serve the reality; I believe we need a Manhattan Project approach to not only refurbishing existing cities, but a program for new town development as well. Nothing less will be more than boosterish eyewash intended mainly to raise the profile of its proponents, the so-called AIA plan being no exception. Such a program could sustain a strong economy for a very long time.
 
Nature and the universe do not need us; we need them, healthy and intact insofar as an environment supportive of mankind, including architects, is concerned.

—Gary R. Collins, AIA
G.R. Collins and Associates, Costa Mesa, Calif.

Re: 2009 AIA Honor Awards for Interior Architecture: Renovation and Reuse Provide Avenues for Sustainable Architecture

Setting aside the valid and long-standing question of why there is a distinction between awards for architecture and awards for interior architecture, I was struck by another question after viewing the 2009 Honor Awards winners for Interior Architecture. Does it require much of a stretch to imagine all of the winners being in the same, albeit large, project? Could one, albeit large, firm have produced such a project—diverse, but with an underlying and consciously applied set of design principles? A quick review of past winning designs suggests the consistency may be a slight anomaly, perhaps due more to the jury or the selection of photographs than to the designers. Still, the selection of this group of winning designs risks reinforcing a perception of the architecture profession as insular, and perhaps worse, fashionable.     

—Roger W. Harris, AIA
Harris Architecture + Design Management
Dallas

Re: DOER’S PROFILE: Monica Ponce de Leon

I have no idea if Monica Ponce de Leon has children, but the reason so many women are not involved in the profession is simple.
 
Money.
 
Her example, a study of women involved in the field of law and architecture is flawed. Women in the field of law have compensation that far outweighs that of women in architecture.

When women begin to balance work with child care—and the costs of childcare—a  profession in architecture barely pays for costs of living. If you add in the whole IDP process and ARE exams schedule, there is no way to compare the two professions.
 
I am so surprised at how surprised she is!

—Cara Cummins
TaC studios
Atlanta

Re: Letters to the Editor

Last week, in response to comments about our poll on whether people will watch the inauguration, we asked readers if we should limit the weekly poll topics to architecture.

I have not renewed my AIA membership this year because, for me, the AIA is getting too political.  Yes, I think that implying bias is wrong.

—John Gresko, LEED-AP, Project Architect
HDR One Company
Chicago

How about if we keep the polling to AIA centered topics, like policies and AIA executive compensation? Really, otherwise you might as well ask who we hope wins “American Idol.”

—Mark Henry, AIA, President
Mark DS Henry Architect PSCS
Souderton, Pa.

Ed. Note: Actually, our most answered poll by far asked, “Who do you think will win the Super Bowl?” Go figure!