About The AIAAbout The AIA

During field visits to AIA Minnesota (June 2012) and AIA Mississippi (July 2012), Jane Kolleeny, AIA consultant to the repositioning initiative, met with AIA members, nonmembers, academics, and component leadership and committees to discuss the AIA’s repositioning initiative.

The following key observations were documented during those meetings.

AIA Minnesota

AIA Minnesota hosted a group discussion that included 15 local architects to participate in a discussion about the repositioning. The group included seasoned practitioners and emerging professionals, some involved with AIA and others who weren’t.

I also met with Jon Buggy, AIA, the president of AIA Minnesota. Each of the component’s 24 statewide committees did a Pecha Kucha type presentation of their activities, with a focus on goals for the next year. I gave a short presentation on the repositioning to this group and others (about 50 people).

AIA Mississippi

AIA Mississippi is a one-chapter state. I attended their convention and had a captive audience for the repositioning.

Because the chapter is small, it’s very tightly connected with Mississippi State University’s architecture school. There were at least four people at convention from the school, including the dean whom I interviewed. Such a tightly connected academic and professional practice is a valuable model.

There were two formats at this convention—private one-on-one interviews on the Expo floor (I conducted 12 of these) and a small group presentation format including about 15 people.

Key Observations

Read key observations from the field visits, below.

Is AIA Committed to Change?

Some architects feel AIA has to take a radical stand on change for it to be real, that leadership at the top needs to show uncompromising direction. That rather than having 20 initiatives AIA needs to focus on a few core values and focus deeply, which is precisely what the repositioning is suggesting. Architects feel their practice is by and large locally based and that AIA should empower the local chapter since communities spend time, creative capital, and money locally. On the other hand, National AIA, with its power in numbers (80,000) can serve as the public face of architecture.

Leadership

Leadership training is an important core value of AIA; there is value to being a good leader in anything we do but architects need to get out and be the leaders they say we are. Architects solve problems as leaders—they lead large and small collaborative consultant teams that design buildings. Architecture is both a service and leadership profession.

Align with Issues Rather than Politics

AIA should remain politically bipartisan aligning itself with issues of livability and community well-being rather than political parties. Taking bipartisan stands on issues important to cities and advocating for certain policies rather than specific projects is the way to go.

The Logo and Acronyms

There are so many acronyms in AIA including the logo itself. Should the traditional logo become new and hip? Will a logo change the perception? No—not the graphic alone! Does the acronym AIA reveal who the profession is? Shouldn’t it?

Academia and AIA

Numerous interviewees remarked on the importance of linking the practicing profession with academia. Both design excellence and a toolkit for practice should be handed to students so they are prepared for the workplace challenges. AIA needs to get into the schools and access the students before they enter the field. Schools that teach through projects, like Rural Studio, the Solar Decathlon and numerous other examples are valuable means to link practice and good design and train future architects in the skills they will need for practice.

Remarks on the Repositioning

Some interviewees think the questions in the survey weren’t good. Many value the interest that AIA National is showing in coming to them and getting their thoughts on issues. Some think the interview format is a better way to get real information than the survey and should be used as the first line of inquiry. Some feel they are surveyed to death due to the Internet and don’t trust their own survey results due to a lack of attention span. Some feel we should be surveying the students not the young professionals, that we should go to AIAS and access their leadership and interview them.

Collaborators

In today’s market, architects are collaborators rather than master builders. Setting up partnerships with other associations that represent the building trades is a good idea in accepting and making the best of that. Also, educating architects in tools like BIM and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) are trends that need to be accepted and implemented in professional practice.

Problem Solvers

The unique critical thinking that architects train in and use in their practice is a core value that could be applied to numerous areas including public office and on boards of education. Architects need to know their clients business better than they do.

Passion/Visionary

There’s a magic to what architects do, which needs to be communicated to those that don’t understand that passion.

Comments on Key Themes

Read a synopsis of interviewee comments on key themes, below.

Lead with Emotion

Architects work well into their seventies, which demonstrates their passion for their work.

The economy has depressed architects causing them to lose their benevolence—they are trained from the beginning in looking after the health, welfare, and well-being of the public realm. It’s healthy for practitioners to look back and take note of why they are doing the things they do now and what was their original inspiration to go into the field.

Honoring good design through the honor awards programs is part of what inspires architects. However, the lion’s share of practicing architects never wins these awards, yet they are still inspired by the firms that do.

Several interviewees remarked that the other 85% of design—the planning, programming, project management, and technical underpinning of design—are an important part of good design, ignored by the profession, absent in the magazines, and invisible to the public. How can the problem-solving skills implemented during the design process, which are such an important part of good design, be demonstrated? Allowing those skills to remain invisible encourages the inaccurate elitist perception the public and clients have about architects—showing the nuts and bolts aspects, the true colors of architecture, makes a better case.

Projects that benefit society’s welfare and safety especially social justice and pro bono design work are a part of leading with emotion. In architects’ minds, everything they do is for the greater good and AIA has the power of marketing that idea on behalf of the profession. The focus on social justice among the younger generation may be a trendy thing that will change as the realities of making a living sink in and these same young people age and have families. In school you want to change the world but when you get out into the world chaos reigns.

Some architects feel passion comes in their ability to give clients the benefit of a project or a building well done, that serves the occupants well, something they will truly appreciate for years to come.

Shift the Conversation from Process to Impact and Benefits

Focusing on data points and case studies that demonstrate the value of good design is not a new idea in the profession and has been discussed for a long time. And while there’s a lot of information out there it is not compiled.

AIA could serve as a clearing house for this information to put in the hands of architects so they can make a case with their clients and the public. Even so, there is a tremendous value in the process of architecture, in the delivery systems and evolution of ideas that result in a building, not just the impacts of buildings.

In addition to focusing on impacts, the profession needs to also articulate the value of the design process, the key problem-solving skills of architects. Some architects feel their process should begin extremely early on, so they are partners with clients in evaluating clients’ needs well before a project is initiated, otherwise they are really only “decorating” programs that are already evolved.

Lead with Conviction and Clear Positions and Members Will Follow

Core values aren’t 100 things. Pare down the value proposition and articulate clear initiatives that architects value with someone at the top providing uncompromising direction.

Focus on Core Offerings

Architects feel the core offerings include:

• The go-to place for standards, research, and education—impartial, proactive and showing its value.

• Advocacy—the strength of 80,000 as a collective of the profession, not just the AIA.

• Bringing awareness to the public: AIA would be valuable as an outward facing organization that serves as the marketing arm of the profession.

• Networking: Rank and file architects as well as emerging professionals continue to remark on AIA’s value in exposing them to fellow professionals and getting outside their local network to see what’s going on national and internationally.

• Leadership: Providing tools to lead is a core offering of AIA.

Serving within AIA as a leader hones these skills, and well as the business training AIA provides to be a leader in professional practice.

Demonstrate Your Value: Speak to the New Needs of Today’s Architects

With the advent of IPD, universities would do well to train students in construction and design/build delivery systems, as is being done at Mississippi State. It is clear to many that this is the direction project delivery is going and rather than hoping to go back to master builder models, architects need to get with the modern-day program. Training students in BIM and updating firms with these technologies, as well as training students and seasoned practitioners on implementing sustainability measures in projects, are important parts of staying current.

Make it Easier for Constituents to Listen

It is clear that architects would like support in learning how to communicate to the public and to their clients. They agree that they communicate quite well amongst themselves but not in language that is clear to the public, especially with respect to telling the story of the full range of what architects do. Providing tools that allow them to communicate their problem-solving capacities would be a valuable tool that AIA could help with.

Architects also feel they don’t listen to their clients enough and need to cultivate the skill of listening, focusing on the business of clients rather than the business of architecture. You can’t get a job if you can’t tell a story.

In general the feeling is that aligning communications vehicles within AIA will be very difficult.

Guide the Conversation: Create More Occasions to Engage the Public

Both chapters visited have public-facing programs. AIA Minnesota has a Center for Architecture with exhibitions, panels, tours, and other activities to extend architects’ visibility into the community. They are also closely linked with the architecture school, with Thomas Fisher at the helm (the school is starting a program on design in disaster areas in the near future). Also, AIA architects teach K-12 students at a local Minneapolis school.

Mississippi doesn’t have a center for architecture but has a successful public-facing annual program that takes place in Jackson and includes public lectures, architects from around the country presenting, art by architects and photography competitions of buildings for children. Also, there is a design camp in Jackson for high school students.

Both programs engage the public and get publicity in the local newspapers. It is clear that architects find these public-facing activities quite valuable.

Various architects brought up the idea of having AIA sponsor programming on NPR and/or create programs around the topic of architecture. Some commented that television programming on the value of design and buildings would be great, that it’s crazy that shows like “Extreme Home Makeover” are so popular and that architects are not a part of it.

Architects remarked that lawyers and doctors have done a better job of letting kids in the system know the value of their professions. Architects have allowed their profession to be shrouded in the unknown and esoteric, which contributes to the elitism we have been talking about. Reaching the kids is a way to educate the public on what we are doing.

Also, educating elected officials is important. Mississippi State University hosted 200 elected officials who listened to a day of programming on the importance of design which has made an enormous difference in getting the attention of the city’s political leaders. The state of Mississippi is no different from other states; few of the elected officials, city or state legislators have any idea what architects do.

Learn more about the AIA’s repositioning initiative at www.aia.org/repositioning.