Dear AIA Members and Friends:
The annual AIA Convention was held in Chicago on June 25-28. Several significant announcements emerged from the event this year:
Julia Morgan, FAIA, was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal. A long overdue recognition, she became the first woman ever to receive this award.
New Orleans-based Architects Eskew+Dumez+Ripple were honored with the Firm of the Year Award. They were cited for, among other things, their use of “rigorously crafted Modernism to repair, restore, and enhance the unique cultural and historic context of their city.”
Ms. Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA, received the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award for fostering diversity. The award was granted “in recognition of Love-Stanley’s career-long dedication to bringing design to underserved communities and to making design education, and education in general, inclusive and accessible to all.”
At the annual General Meeting, by a majority vote of the members, the AIA Board was completely restructured. The restructuring will reduce the size of the Institute’s Board of Directors and add a new Strategic Council to support the Board. These changes are designed to make the AIA’s leadership structure smaller, more nimble and better able to respond to the Institute’s challenges and opportunities going forward.
For those of us overseas, we will continue to be represented on the AIA Board by our International Region Director.
Returning to Hong Kong news, we look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.
On July 16 please join us for a thought provoking lecture by Ms. Terri Peters, PhD, co-author of Inside Smartgeometry, who will be speaking on Innovation in Design. This will be followed on July 24 by an evening presentation and panel discussion on advanced facade design by Karl James of Meinhardt, Ken Wai of Aedas, and Martin Riese of Front.
Please also remember to check our website www.aiahk.org to keep informed about future local and regional Chapter events, as well as the many other related activities that we support.
And finally, on July 31, please come and celebrate the opening of our new AIA Hong Kong Office at the PMQ with friends and colleagues!!!
With kind regards,
Christian Low, AIA, 2014 President – AIA Hong Kong Chapter