Contract - May 2009 - (Page 22)

editorial on with the shows Jennifer Thiele Busch Editor in Chief It’s the spring trade show season in the commercial design world, and restricted travel budgets dictate that we must visit some of them only virtually. But last week I did have the opportunity to attend the annual AIA Convention, where I was pleasantly surprised to see a great buzz of activity and positive energy. Of course, it was hosted in San Francisco, which is experiencing its share of architectural excitement lately, with Piano’s California Academy of Sciences, SOM’s Cathedral of Christ the Light and ELS’s restored Fox Theater in Oakland being important newcomers on the design scene—not to mention Libeskind’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, Morphosis’s San Francisco Federal Building, and Herzog & de Meuron’s de Young Museum, all of which arrived within the last few years and are still garnering lots of attention. This is also home to two of our favorite socially conscious organizations, Public Architecture, headed by the ever-gracious John Peterson and John Cary, and Architecture for Humanity, which celebrated it’s 10th anniversary—and 10 years of remarkable accomplishments—during the convention. The educational program was extensive and well-attended, the parties were fun and well-attended, and the atmosphere was upbeat, which puts our industry in the right state of mind as we hurdle toward NeoCon®. No doubt our annual Chicago event will be a year of fewer attendees, fewer product introductions, and more talk of the dismal economy, but a positive attitude is an important strategy in challenging times. Hopefully, we will use it to our best advantage and make this annual gathering of interior designers, architects, and product manufacturers an example of an industry that is meeting tough times head on with innovation and high spirit. Perhaps the most heartening thing I saw in the Bay Area last week was the Build San Francisco Institute (www.afsf.org/program_buildsf.htm), a program of the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco (AFSF). The Institute is not new, and Contract has written about it before, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to visit in person, which I did at the urging of Tom Gerfen, CEO of RMW, who has been integrally involved for years. Build San Francisco is a half-day high school program for students interested in design, construction, engineering, and architecture. A community educational partnership involving AFSF, San Francisco Unified School District, and more than two dozen major San Francisco design firms, the program combines a rigorous academic program with mentorships in the partner firms, so that students gain new knowledge and have the immediate experience of applying that knowledge in a real world setting. On my visit to the Institute, just down the street from Moscone Center, AFSF executive director Alan Sandler and AFSF programs director Will Fowler talked with passion about the program and what it means to the participants. Since Build San Francisco Institute draws students from all of the city’s public secondary schools, it serves as a melting pot of the accomplished and the at-risk, the privileged and the disadvantaged, the sons of middle class American families and the daughters of working class immigrant families. In the end, these kids come to understand design and architecture, issues of urban development, municipal politics, etc., which makes them better informed citizens and helps them appreciate the power of design to transform communities, whether or not they choose to pursue design or construction as a career. At present, AFSF is exploring the possibility of duplicating this remarkable program in other cities around the country, an effort that I believe deserves our industry’s support. The most disheartening experience I had in San Francisco was a meeting of the AIA’s Interior Architecture Knowledge Community, through no fault of the committee’s advisory group: Timothy Hawk of WSA Studio in Columbus, Ohio; Mary Burke of Burke Design & Architecture in New York; John Jessen of VOA Associates in Washington, D.C., (the designers of this month’s cover feature, Volkswagen’s North American Headquarters p. 96); Ken Wilson of Envision Design, also in Washington, D.C. (who we congratulate for his recent induction into the AIA College of Fellows); and Steve McCollum, a design consultant in San Francisco. Billed as an outreach forum to elicit feedback from AIA members who have expressed an interest in interior architecture, the session unfortunately was poorly attended, and almost all who did attend spoke about the general disregard within the AIA for addressing the specific needs of designers who focus on interiors. Yet as Hawk noted at the meeting, the AIA’s 2009 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture celebrate buildings that are recognized as much for their interiors as their exteriors. It’s time for lingering divisions between the practices of architecture and interior design— or whatever you personally want to call it—to disappear. In fact, it’s amazing that these divisions actually still exist. Let’s finally do away with lingering perceptions that designing interiors is somehow a lesser art, and kudos to the Interior Architecture Knowledge Community for its efforts to do so. Only through a holistic approach to design will the built environment ever be able to realize its full potential. Submit a Letter to the Editor at www.contractmagazine.com/contact. 22 contract may 2009 www.contractmagazine.com http://www.afsf.org/program_buildsf.htm http://www.contractmagazine.com/contact http://www.contractmagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - May 2009

Contract - May 2009
Contents
Editorial
Industry
Exhibition: Best of NeoCon® 2009
Keep It Simple, Sustainable
Generation NextGeneration Next
All Lit Up
Outside the Box
LEED v3: A Highly Evolved Solution
The Office Evolution
Brand New
Jump Start
Tailored Fit
The Energizer Effect
Diamond in the Rough
Chat Room
Designers Rate: Panel Fabrics
Ad Index
Perspectives

Contract - May 2009