by: AIA New York
On Thursday, December 9, 2021, AIA New York welcomed its 2022 Board of Directors at the Board Inaugural. Executive Director Benjamin Prosky, Assoc. AIA, and Immediate Past President Kenneth A. Lewis, AIA, began the evening by celebrating this year’s achievements, particularly in light of this year’s uncertainties. Following the passing of the gavel, incoming 2022 President Andrea Lamberti, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, NCARB, discussed her presidential theme, “Just Practice.”
2022 PRESIDENTIAL THEME – JUST PRACTICE
Lamberti’s 2022 Presidential Theme, Just Practice, encourages practitioners to leverage the profession’s capacity for lifelong learning to do better, working together to build a more just and equitable future. “For many of us who are lucky enough,” said Lamberti, “the decades needed to build and contribute to a professional practice offer the opportunity for continued professional and personal growth and reinvention.”
In her inaugural speech, Lamberti invited AIANY members to dedicate 2022 to learning about several issues, with the goal of better understanding how a just practice can improve equity outcomes across communities. Lamberti invited members to come together to learn about how public funds are distributed for civic and community infrastructure and how incentives for private development can be crafted to result in equitable distribution across the city. She called for the chapter’s membership to continue to focus on issues surrounding affordable housing and homelessness and to continue the work outlined in the chapter’s statement calling on architects to cease the design of spaces of incarceration. Noting how resilience continues to elude us, Lamberti also called on chapter members to deepen their understanding on the adoption of a greener living infrastructure, “one that can not only contribute to a better and more sustainable planet but also to a more just and fair realm for historically underserved communities.”
After addressing these large-scale issues, Lamberti invited members to also advance these goals through the daily activities of practice. She asked, “As citizens and practitioners privileged with professional degrees, how can we ensure that our cohort becomes more reflective of our population as a whole?” In 2022, the chapter will focus on the pipeline toward licensure by supporting K-12 initiatives, by building on the Chapter’s Discover Architecture career discovery program, by continuing AIANY’s partnership with nycoba|NOMA, and by establishing a mechanism to connect New York area firms with architecture departments at historically black colleges and universities.
“We must be bold in our endeavors to improve, not only the quality resulting from our output, but also in our behavior, so that it reflects our aspirations for a more inclusive and welcoming profession,” concluded Lamberti. “How can we be the people we mean to be? Just practice just practice,”
CHAPTER RECOGNITION
The inaugural also served as an opportunity to recognize members and projects of the architecture and design community for their contributions or impact. AIANY’s Vice Presidents recognized the Chapter’s program committees or their initiatives with Vice Presidential Citations for contributions in each of our mission areas: design excellence, public outreach, and professional development.
AIANY Vice Presidential Citations
AIANY Citation for Design Excellence: “Future of Cultural Centers” program series, organized by the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee
AIANY Citation for Public Outreach: “Fight or Flight” program series, organized by the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee
AIANY Citation for Professional Development: AIANY Custom Residential Architects Network