by Patricia Oliver, FAIA

Summary: There has never been a time in our professional lives when we have witnessed an economic downturn as severe as the one we are experiencing now. There is no question that weathering the current economic climate is the number one issue on everyone’s mind.

Consequently, there has never been a time when networking, building new alliances, discovering new strategies has been more necessary. The convention has always been that opportunity for our members, and this year, more than ever, we offer opportunities to take a hard look at your practice, expand your knowledge base and prepare for the future.

Over the course of planning for this convention, we have been told many times that diversity is the key to success in a troubling economy: diversity of project types, diversity of skills, and the diversity of your talent pool. We have taken the theme: Diversity: Practice in a Complex World as an opportunity to examine the myriad ways that practice is being accomplished; the myriad ways that the profession is positioned to tackle the complex issues of climate change, urbanization, disaster recovery, crumbling infrastructures, the creation of new cities and the cultural and political challenges of global practice.

The majority of the attendees at our convention are architects who come for the continuing education sessions. This year we made a very special effort to ensure that the sessions were of the highest quality. I personally wrote over 100 letters to people/firms that have received recognition for the extraordinary work they are doing, to ask them to submit proposals. Chair of Continuing Education Michael Strogoff, AIA, and I feel confident that we have delivered the best compendium of speakers and firms possible. A few examples ...

Alex Steffan is a gifted speaker, a participant in the TED conference, author of the best-selling Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, co-founder of the Liveable Communities Coalition, and partner with Architecture for Humanity. He also authors the second largest sustainability Web site on the planet. He has waived his usual speaker’s fee to be in San Francisco to introduce his groundbreaking project: “Bright Green,” the world’s first completely documented and realized portrayal of sustainable prosperity in North America.

Craig Hartman, winner of four National AIA Honor Awards, and a Federal Design Achievement Award in the 2000 Presidential Design Awards Program and the youngest recipient of the Maybeck Award from the California Council of the AIA, will present a session titled, “Toward a Regenerative Urban Ecology.”

Bryan Bell, author of Good Deed, Good Design, Community Service Through Architecture will offer a session on “Expanding Design Toward Greater Relevance.”

AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker will offer a seminar on “The Construction Outlook: Implications for Architecture Firms.”

Award winning architects Michael Pinto, Mark Rios, and Sebastian Mariscal will join Frances Anderton, NPR/KCRW commentator and architectural critic in a session titled “Emerging Modes of Practice.”

Our first General Session speaker is Peter Head, chairman of ARUP International, an employee-owned organization that has 70 offices in 30 countries (though this number may have changed in the last several months). They are designing and building eight eco-cities, six in China and two in India. And what is interesting about that, incredible as it is by itself, is the diversity of staff who make it possible. In addition to architects and engineers, there is a person on staff whose job is to know the political workings of the cities they are engaged in: who makes decisions, how they make them, who has the influence in the region, etc. There is a staff member who only studies wind and one who studies water. There are sociologists and geologists—and this is what gives ARUP the edge over mega developers and other major firms vying for these commissions.

On Friday, John Hockenberry, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, will moderate a panel of young architects who have positioned themselves in the global marketplace, working in Asia, Europe, Scandanavia, and the US.

Amale Andraos, principal in a firm called WORK, has lived in five countries, and there are seven countries represented in their small office in New York.

Minsuk Cho, of Korea, has focused on architecture in the context of mass production, intensely over-populated urban conditions, and other emergent cultural niches that define contemporary society.

Julien de Smedt, of Copenhagen, has a multidisciplinary office that focuses on architecture and design, from large scale planning to furniture. Rich with multiple expertise the office is fueled by talented designers as well as experienced architects.

Craig Dykers, of Snohetta—located in Oslo and New York City—began his career by winning a competition to design the Alexandria Library. Competitions have continued to be his favored approach to obtaining jobs, and he has completed an impressive list of projects such as the Oslo Opera House in Norway, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Ras al Khaimah Gateway Project, and a growing list of projects in the U.S.

The Saturday General Session is unlike anything we’ve ever done at the convention. In the hour-and-a-half session, we will introduce 13 extraordinary, emerging talents. Representing 10 cities across the country, these award-winning architects will present their work in a fast-paced presentation in dynamic images, animations and/or film and video clips. Multidisciplinary, multicultural and wildly diverse in their practices, these emerging voices will offer a multitude of ways to tackle the issues facing architects today. You will meet Sheila Kennedy: co-creator of the Soft House: an experiment in prefabricated housing that generates its own power; Nader Tehrani, of Office dA, working on projects from Boston to Kuwait, Beijing and Caracas; Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architects burst on the scene with his successful design for the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the first LEED rated museum in the world; and design/build architect Randy Brown, winner of 7 National AIA awards, 10 Regional AIA awards, and 10 State AIA awards for his innovative, site-sensitive projects. Joining them is Cameron Sinclair, of San Francisco; Teddy Cruz, of San Diego; Tom Kundig, of Seattle; Jeanne Gang, of Chicago; Quinqyun Ma, of Los Angeles and Shanghai; Paul Lewis, of New York; Phil Freelon, of Raleigh; Sebastian Schmalling, of Milwaukee; and Lisa Iwamoto, of San Francisco.

Since the rapid-fire presentation of this session will only allow the audience a glimpse of the work of each firm, each speaker will also participate in panel discussions offered each day of the convention and moderated by Robert Ivy, FAIA, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record; Sam Grawe, editor of DWELL; R. Steven Lewis, Loeb fellow and president of the National Organization of Minority Architects; and Edward LIfson, Loeb fellow and arts, architecture, and culture editor for Chicago Public Radio.

We have given you a program brimming with new talent and innovative ideas on how to diversify, how to tackle challenges to our practice, and how to expand the influence of our profession.

I’m going to borrow from author Alan Axelrod who describes the difference between a rich person and a wealthy person. “A rich person has a lot of money and buys things. A wealthy person invests in things that make more money.” I encourage you to create ongoing wealth out of your intellectual capital and join us in San Francisco.