As I approach the midpoint of my term as president of AIA New York Chapter, I am deeply humbled and excited by the impact that my presidential theme, Belonging and Beyond, has had on the programming and conversations throughout our Chapter. I owe a debt of gratitude to numerous Chapter committees and individuals who have brought life to my call to focus on crucial aspects of human well-being that improve physical and social-emotional health and resilience by deepening our connections with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences.
Thank you to:
- The AIANY Historic Buildings Committee and AIANY Planning and Urban Design Committee for your presentation, Legacies of Redlining: Preservation and Development in Manhattan. I look forward to your next sessions and supplemental tours.
- The AIANY Chapter Cultural Facilities Committee for the program series Belonging + Beyond: The Future of Public Space and Art (the first presentation in a series of four). Ann Marie Baranowski, FAIA, your vision for this series was simply brilliant!
- The AIANY Interiors Committee for the 14th edition of Speed Presentations, which called for project entries that make significant contributions to the well-being of communities and individuals through the transformative power of design. Thank you, Stephan Jaklitsch, FAIA, and Barbara Weinreich, Assoc. AIA, for aligning your program with the Belonging theme.
Beyond the work of the committees, at the core of my efforts is an open working group unpacking my Presidential Focus for 2024: Community Engagement and Belonging. This group has met three times to date for collective visioning and strategy development. Our discernment conversations led us to two through lines, which we believe situate architects and other design professionals within larger landscape shifts toward generative planning, process, and output norms that are community-situated and reflect community priorities:
- Design practices and standards around community engagement can and must be established and normalized to change the status quo dynamics of exclusion, harm, and mistrust.
- Belonging—feeling “recognized by and connected to” a space or community—can be nurtured if architects have the intention, mindset (self-awareness), practices, and tools to authentically and effectively engage community members.
From these shared points of understanding, we will be developing specific priorities for AIANY over the next two years:
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Priority 1. Support practitioner learning, mindset, and practice shifts.
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Priority 2. Advocate for funding and reforming community engagement/partnership processes.
Our discussions will continue this month regarding which activities and actors should be central to these pursuits. Your curiosity and ideas are absolutely welcome. It is with great excitement that I share this progress and, in the weeks to come, you can expect details about what is coming into focus for this fall and how to get involved.
Finally, I invite you to read the letter on the facing page jointly crafted by AIA Bronx, AIA Staten Island, AIA Queens, AIA Brooklyn, and AIANY. It encapsulates our desire to remove the barriers that have isolated the NYC chapters for so long. We believe all architects in NYC should have the same access, privileges, and depth of member engagement. We encourage everyone to help us move beyond the siloed ways of our past and to support the efforts of all five chapters. This is the only way we can thrive and, most importantly, feel as though we all belong.
I look forward to continuing our year of curiosity, growth, discernment, and impact.
