Building Connections and Sharing Ideas: AIA Ohio Conference
Written by Jacob Miley, AIA
As a first time AIA Ohio Conference attendee I was very impressed overall. I found the venue to be inspiring, the session content to be beneficial, and the attendance of my fellow Ohio architects to be encouraging. Being able to reconnect with AIA members from other cities always leaves me feeling positive and motivated. During the design awards ceremony I made it a point to sit at a table with people I hadn’t yet met, it was great to meet a few people from Cincinnati, hear about projects their working on, and learn of their involvement with a project currently in development in Toledo. The conference offered a wide range of breakout session options; from building and walking tours, to case study project presentations, and examples of collaboration between civic and academic institutions, among many others. The breakouts sessions that I attended offered pre-design resources for mass-timber design, examples of how accessory dwelling units (ADU’s) are adding value to property owners, and acoustic material performance examples within and between spaces.
The design awards jury chair and keynote speaker, Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, won the AIA Gold medal in 2023, the first living woman to accept the award. Carol shared examples of her work in the Chicago area, and it was evident that she is as the title she’s earned suggests, The People’s Architect. Her ongoing work along the Chicago river was especially fascinating as she has been able to embed each architectural intervention with the adjacent cultural influences. The final keynote speaker of the conference was Ann Lui, AIA who is also based in Chicago. Her ideas-driven building and research practice, Future Firm, works across scales and cultures bringing equity and justice to the people of Chicago. She is actively involved in representing marginalized communities when faced with building code violations and goes so far to suggest that people in these communities should be ‘appointed’ an architect to remedy their often unmanageable situation.
There were a total of nine AIA Toledo members who attended the conference, the most we’ve sent in recent years. It was great to represent our chapter well in Columbus and I look forward to discussing further the takeaways from the conference with our membership.
AIA Ohio Awards Celebration
Dorrian Green Park & National Veterans Memorial and Museum Tour
AIA Ohio members networking during LU’s & Brews