Ian Schmidt, AIA
Section Director-Elect, AIA Bend
I am excited to be joining the AIA Bend chapter leadership group as the 2022 Director-Elect. I am looking forward to meeting more colleagues and providing design opportunities to colleagues at all levels of experience. The majority of my volunteering in the last 5 years has been with community organizations focused on housing; so, while this is my first official role with the AIA I’ve had many opportunities to be a voice for architects within our business community. I believe that architects and designers have an important role to play in shaping our communities through activism as well as our professional work.
I see myself as a pretty average resident of Bend Oregon, which is another way of saying “I like being outside, and I didn’t start out here.” I grew up in a mid-sized city in the northern Andes mountains of Peru and then a few miles away from the Pacific Ocean in the southern border city of Peru and Chile. My parents moved back to central Kansas in the mid-90s, and I lived there until going to the college of architecture at Kansas State University. While in architecture school I was heavily influenced by the social housing models of pioneered in Scandinavia in the 1970s and was fortunate to study for parts of my last two years of undergrad in Denmark and Norway. The centrality of modern design and support for community-based approaches to caring for our neighbors made a deep impression on me, and I’ve been pursuing those two things ever since.
My first foray into community involvement as an architect came in 2015 with a healthy push from the director of Bend 2030 who -fortuitously for me- shared a space with the architectural office I worked at. I loved being part of the Middle Market Housing Workgroup and helping shape the community dialogue around housing. I am proud to have served for 4 years on the Affordable Housing Advisory Council in Bend and love the opportunity to bring an AEC perspective to local policy deliberations. There are more organizations that have shaped me than I can name here, but I will say that my appreciation for our Central Oregon community easily doubled during my time in Leadership Bend.
My current role in the industry is as a Partner and Architect at COLE Architects, and I love getting to work a wide range of projects across central & eastern Oregon and Idaho. Easily the most fun part of my position is getting to indulge my joint passions for mentoring and writing good contracts.
In my year as Director-Elect I am going to try to meet all our local members, reach out to every firm in Bend to understand what each of you are passionate about, and ask how I can open doors for the opportunities each of you dream about. Our local AIA chapter is a collaborative democracy – and my role in that democracy is to provide opportunities for growth, self-expression, and supporting the current and future leaders in our profession.
I believe that our local community and region will be its best when a diverse range of buildings are available to meet our diverse population. Historically Central Oregon has had a high percentage of single-family homes, but as housing continues to soar in price and our state land use laws both require further densification and constrain the buildable land supply, other approaches can help address those challenges. As more people move the American West each year, a critical mass is growing to consider options including but not limited to the traditional model of single-family detached homes, walk-up apartments, and car-centric business areas. I am excited to find local opportunities for advocacy in the built environment and even more excited to do it with colleagues and friends.