Message from the AIA Oregon Executive Vice President

Curt Wilson, AIA
Executive Vice President/CEO, AIA Oregon

As look forward to the Memorial Day weekend, I’m reflecting on the impact COVID-19 has had on our chapter, our firms, and our members.  Now, more than ever, it is important for us to be mindful of each other, and to make opportunities for engagement for those who have become isolated.  With this in mind, I want to highlight our current activities and opportunities to get involved.

Digital Design Series

We started the AIA Oregon Digital Design Series on April 22 with teams from DLR Group and Hacker sharing how they are engaging with their internal project teams, clients, and user groups to collaborate in the design of their projects virtually.  This was followed the next week by friends at the Architecture Department at U of O discussing how they are designing and collaborating from a distance.  On May 13, Scott Mooney of SRG Partnership and Kyle Keck of Affiliated Engineers presented their work in the OSU Cascades Academic Building 2 in a virtual In-Process Lecture session, and yesterday, May 20, three members shared projects in the first of many AIA Oregon Presents! sessions.  See the article in the Newsletter for a recap and upcoming sessions.

All of these presentations share a focus on design, such as tools and techniques with the digital collaboration session, the design process with the In-Process series, or recently completed (or near completion) in the AIAO Presents! series.  We are scheduling these events on Wednesdays at 5:00 through Zoom and trying to keep them to an hour.  I encourage you to check one out in the next few weeks.

What excites me the most about the Digital Design Series is the opportunity for all of us to share what we are working on in a friendly and informal setting.  I want to thank Jim Satzinger, AIA, the Section Director from Bend, for his efforts to bring the AIA Oregon Presents! series to life.  Jim has created an opportunity for us to share his passion for design and celebrating the work we do.  Ben Arico, AIA, the Director-Elect from Portland, has been leading the In-Process Lecture group for a few years now, and he’s done a wonderful job creating an opportunity for a local architect and a trade partner to discuss something they are working together or in common.  We do things because of the efforts of members like Jim and Ben, so thank you!

Design Awards Task Force

The transition to a single-state chapter has forced us to evaluate what we do, and determine if it aligns, or supports what we want to be doing.  While we know we want to encourage and advocate for good design, we need to take the time to determine if our current design recognition programs are the best way for us to do it.  Please check out the article in the Newsletter and reach out to me if you want to be involved in the Task Force.  I want to point out that the task force should wrap up after a few meetings, and there will be more opportunities to organize the events we do this year.

Leadership Roles

I want to thank all of you that are leading our committees, sections, and board of directors.  As someone that has been involved as an active member for a long time, I know the effort that it takes to serve as a leader in a volunteer organization while working full time and focusing on family.  To honor that commitment, it is important that we support you when it is time to step back from your leadership role, and help support the next leaders. 

Many of our current committee leaders have been in those roles for multiple terms, and we need emerging leaders to step forward and step up.  My experience on the AIA Southwest Oregon board a few decades ago was excellent training for the role of firm principal I stepped into a few years later.  Committee and board leadership is leadership training, and your colleagues and employers not only benefit from it, but they see it first hand!

Please check out our committees on the website and get involved in the committee, or committees, that interest you.  We have openings for chair of the chapter Programs Committee and AIA Eugene Section Emerging Professional Committee, and a few other committee chairs are ready to step back when others are willing to step forward. 

Our board of director terms are two years; therefore we are also looking for new leaders at the board level at the beginning of next year. Please contact AIA Oregon President Amy Vohs (avohs@dlrgroup.com) or me (cwilson@aiaoregon.org) if you want to learn more about board openings in 2021.

Engagement

The economic impacts from the COVID-19 crisis have forced the Oregon Employment Department to better understand unemployment trends in almost real time so the state can best deliver their limited resources to do the most good.  They are updating unemployment data almost every week and breaking out by county and sectors.  This page will be updated regularly on their website.  From that page, you will find an article that tries to give context to the data. 

The chart above can be found within the article and shows that unemployment in the Architecture and Engineering sector is 4%, which is one of the lowest sectors in the economy.  4% is not 20%, so that’s good, but it still reflects that many in our community are out of work.  My understanding is that unemployment in our sector pre-COVID was less than 1%, so the increase to 4% is noteworthy.  If you’ve been unemployed, or recently unemployed, these are just numbers.  Your life is impacted in a way that can’t be described through metrics. 

The pandemic has forced us to ask what’s the purpose of a professional association and how can we best serve our members.  For many of our members, who continue to work and need to balance staying healthy, supporting their family, and working remotely, the best thing we can do it step back and let them focus on their priorities. For those that aren’t busy with work and family, I worry about isolation, and how we can help them stay engaged.  All our events are promoted on the website and open to everyone, and we’ve scheduled a weekly Virtual Happy Hour at 4:00 on Fridays.  We recognize that some in our communities need other avenues to engage, but we are struggling to connect with them and help.  If you know someone that is not currently working, please stay in touch with them.  Encourage them to get involved in AIA Oregon events and/or to reach out to me if you, or they have suggestions for how we can help.   

Curt Wilson, AIA
Executive Vice President/CEO, AIA Oregon
cwilson@aiaoregon.org

Message from the AIA Oregon Architect License Advisor

Chris Lewis, Assoc. AIA
AIA Oregon Architect License Advisor

My name is Chris Lewis and I’m the AIA Oregon State License Advisor, as well as a Senior Associate at Ankrom Moisan Architects. I love architecture, and I love helping people find their path in the profession. Sometimes this path includes licensure, and sometimes it doesn’t, but the great thing about what we do is that there’s room for everyone.

You may be wondering what an “architect license advisor” does. I had the same question when I was offered the position. We are a group of local professionals, educators and students who volunteer our time to help others pursue licensure and reciprocity. Every National Architectural Accredited Board (NAAB) - accredited program has an educational advisor, and most AIA state chapters have an advisor. The Architect License Advisor role is defined by National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), however AIA makes the appointment in each state.  I was recently reappointed for another term by AIA Oregon.

To provide additional support to emerging professionals in our field, student advisors from AIAS chapters across the country have been added, as well as firm appointed advisors to act as resources for individual firms. The reason we need all of these resources is to support the 55 unique jurisdictions that issue a License to practice Architecture in the United States. Each of these jurisdictions has its own way of setting the standard for who can practice as and call themselves an Architect with defined requirements for Education, Experience and Examination. NCARB has worked with these jurisdictions to create a baseline qualification through model codes, which many states have adopted. However, distinction remain between jurisdictions, and in an effort to provide good advice to candidates, the license advisor position was created. NCARB and the AIA wanted to offer someone local to help candidates navigate the process. We aren’t the final answer to your questions, but we are good resources to point you in the right direction.

What advice can I give candidates on their path to their initial license that is timely? Right now, take care of yourself and your job - in that order. At the moment, things are rough, and it’s okay to admit that. I’m sitting here writing this to you at midnight, after putting in a full day of work trying to hit 3 deadlines on Friday, and I know not all of you have that privilege. I also spent another 8 hours helping my 6-year-old son with his distance learning and making sure my family is healthy. So, if you were on the path to licensure and the pandemic has slowed you down, it is completely understandable. Even if you have studied, the Prometric testing centers have been closed for over a month, and they aren’t planning on reopening until at LEAST May 31st. If you had an exam scheduled you will have to reschedule once Prometric opens again, and even then you might get bumped because they will only be running at 50 percent capacity.  If you have the capacity to take on studying, I’d say do it and be ready when the world opens back up. But if you don’t have the bandwidth, that’s okay, testing right now is going to be more difficult than it normally is. Give yourself some grace.

NCARB tips for AXP Candidates:

1)     Your AXP hours won’t expire. Once you’ve submitted your qualifying hours to your supervisor the reporting timeline is no longer a concern.

2)     Only submit reports when there is experience to report. You are not required to report if there are no experience hours to report. You can also look into the Setting O experiences for opportunities to get AXP hours.

3)     Work performed remotely that your AXP supervisor has direct knowledge of and control over counts for experience hours.

4)     Report in shorter time frames to avoid complications that could arise from a change of employment or illness for you or your supervisor.

5)      You may qualify for a reporting requirement extension if you are experiencing extenuating life circumstances. You will need to contact NCARB and provide documentation of the hardship.

NCARB tips for Testing Candidates:

1)     NCARB has added a 9 month extension to all valid passing scores as of March 1, 2020. This is an automatic extension that should be reflected in your NCARB record.

2)     All rescheduling fees have been waived until further notice.

3)     They are encouraging candidates to schedule or reschedule tests for the fall or winter to avoid conflicts or having to reschedule because of closure extensions into June and beyond.

ARE Study materials:

1)     The AIA Archiprep study program is being offered FREE through August

2)     Look for other ARE Prep material providers offering discounts or free access such as Amberbooks

I’m glad I got the chance to introduce myself to the larger architectural community, and to the broader sections of AIA Oregon. Please do not hesitate to reach out with your questions. I may not have the answer, but I’ll be able to help you navigate the path to getting to an answer. Stay safe out there, and do what you can to help each other out.

Message from the AIA Portland Director-Elect

Ben Arico, AIA
AIA Portland Director-Elect

I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon and went to film school for my undergraduate degree at the College of Santa Fe, in New Mexico.  While studying film, I learned how the cultural identity of the time and place manifests itself into the film medium.  In many ways these messages are subconscious.  As I was completing my master’s degree in architecture at the University of New Mexico, I could see striking similarities in the way that architecture speaks to us through the boundaries and facades of our environment.  I appreciate how our environment is not just designed by architects, but that our community creates architecture as an expression of itself physically, economically, and socially.  We get to see who we are by what we make space for.

When I started working at Bora Architects a little over five years ago, I was overwhelmed with the scale and complexity of the firm’s projects. My focus was on my work, and I didn’t lift my head up for a few years. One of my favorite aspects of working at Bora is the collaborative dialogue that happens as the project develops. There is an opportunity for everyone to contribute and engage. Through this process of listening, learning, and communicating, I gained knowledge and confidence. It became clear to me that sharing experiences is a key factor in the professional development of members of the design community.

With my comfort level increasing, I began to see how the design community extends beyond the office. Our offices are not separate objects, but part of a porous matrix that connects us all together. In March of 2019 I started coordinating the AIA Oregon InProcess Lecture Series with a goal of integrating my interests with the larger design community of Portland. It has opened my eyes to the incredible depth and richness of design cultivation that occurs in the fabric of our city. InProcess creates a positive exchange of ideas and learning experiences that strengthen the community as a whole. 

InProcess is a lecture series based on design professionals sharing the process of how they work. What makes the series so successful is that in every lecture there are two presenters: and architect and a trade partner. The trade partner can be from any profession. We’ve spoken with photographers, fabricators, furniture makers, sound designers, ceramic and fabric artists; just to name a few. 

Each presenter gets 20 minutes to share aspects of how they work. InProcess isn’t so much about showing the finished product as it is about showing the steps of progression. We get to see the iterations of the work and talk about the tools used to study the design. We get to hear about team structures, office dynamics, and how budgets, schedules, and client relationships influence the project.

InProcess exposes us to the huge variety of design work that takes place in Portland and throughout the Northwest. There are so many different ways to accomplish good design, and so many different scales of work in various disciplines. For example. the type of thinking required to mass-produce an object is extremely different than the creation of a one-off installation for a specific environment. We can learn so much by applying lessons from one situation into another. Hearing about how designers have navigated the constraints of their work field is incredibly valuable. The architect and the trade partner are often thematically related, and we have seen some fantastic dialogues generated through these juxtapositions.

The final 20 minutes of an InProcess Lecture is where the community gets to participate in the dialogue. Questions are taken from the audience and often morph into additional dialogues between the presenters or influence additional questions. This exchange of ideas, perspectives, and insights is where our community builds collective knowledge.

InProcess acts as a framework that invigorates and empowers all of our designers to better serve the people of Oregon.

As we continue our transition to a single state chapter, the Programs Committee began planning for the Portland-based InProcess series to be broadcast to all sections, and to encourage other communities to develop their own version.  Our current situation with only virtual events accelerated the process, and for the foreseeable future, InProcess will be broadcast through Zoom as part of the AIA Oregon Digital Design Series.  I would encourage all of you to attend as many of these events as you can.

The next InProcess event is  Wednesday, May 13 at 5pm.  You can email me at arico@bora.co if you would like more information on the series, if you are interested in sharing your work, or if you have suggestions for future lectures.