Grassroots speakers at the March 7 plenary session—Institute leaders and Dr. Freeman Hrabrowski III, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus—advanced leadership concepts by urging attendees to invest in their future by escalating political involvement and building links that promote diversity in architecture and design.

AIA President Thompson E. Penney, FAIA, urged his colleagues to raise the volume of the profession’s voice through contributions to ArchiPAC, the Institute’s political action committee. Standing in for ArchiPAC Treasurer Bill Smith, FAIA, Penney asked for support to increase the profession’s influence in national issues that affect architecture practices, including procurement policy, livable communities, security through design, infrastructure development, preservation, redevelopment, and renewal programs. “Federal legislation and regulation affect your business, my business, and our success . . . You can’t have too many friends in Washington,” Penney observed.

Penney also noted the importance of civic engagement, a point that keynote speaker Hrabrowski, echoed in his own energetic remarks. Hrabrowski, the 2001 recipient of the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education and a consultant to the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education, among other public and corporate entities, emphasized leadership and diversity and the need for architects to continue to be open to new ideas and generate enthusiasm among young minorities for architecture.

“Make the passion contagious”
“Dreams and values will shape who we are and who we will be in the future,” Hrabrowski said, imploring architects to bring minorities into the profession by identifying the brightest students from different backgrounds and getting them excited about architecture. As leaders, architects have the responsibility to immerse these students in their offices, mentor them, and give them the tools they need to succeed in the profession. Architects must also imbue these students with a vision of what they can aspire to be. He invoked his own experiences and the memory of Whitney Young Jr.’s speech at the 1968 AIA convention, noting that while the critical issues society and the profession faced 35 years ago are similar to the challenges of today, the discussion has shifted from changing attitudes to transforming actions.

To attract minorities, Hrabrowski—who at 12 played a youth-leadership role in the Birmingham, Ala., Civil Rights movement and went to jail with Martin Luther King Jr.—advised the audience to “make the passion contagious and then communicate your vision broadly.” He also charged AIA members to promote the value of design in their communities, remarking that issues of architecture and urban design are increasingly at the forefront of contemporary debates. He said he often turns to his own campus architect much as he turns to his lawyer for advice and counsel. “Architects understand that public and civic spaces are manifestations of civic society.”

Hrabrowski challenged the architect leaders to “think carefully about who you are as individuals and who you are as a profession.” While the public has the notion that architects are a knowledgeable, well-educated, and elite group, they don’t know what role architects play in the development of public and civic spaces in their communities.” Architect leaders, he said, can help strengthen the perception of their profession by making the public and politicians more aware of the impact of design. Architecture should not be considered an “add-on,” but the “core of society,” Hrabrowski concluded. He asked architects to think about the language they can use to make the case that architecture is not just the province of the rich or high-minded, rather it is an essential part of our lives, and “is at the core of who we are.”

Harking back to Whitney Young’s 1968 speech, Hrabrowski left the audience with his own call to action: “Architecture is the most permanent indicator of a society’s principles” he said. He then quoted Thomas Jefferson in closing as he had in his opening: “About style, swim with the tide. About principles, stand like a rock.”

Home Sweet Home
Jeremiah Eck, FAIA, rounded out the morning’s group of speakers with a presentation on his book, The Distinctive Home, A Vision of Timeless Design, in which he espouses four constructs for creating the distinctive home:
• Site: Marrying a house to the land
• Floor plan: Expressing the way you live
• The public face: Balancing function and beauty
• Details: The intimate realm.

And take the time to indulge in creating art, he said as he showed slides of some the paintings he has done recently and that release him from what would otherwise be the 24/7 of work management, he said.

The 2003 publication marks the first in a series of residential design books to be published in partnership with Taunton Press.

—Tracy F. Ostroff

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