President’s Letter
August 2020
It continues to be a challenging time for many of us, both professionally and personally. Here at the International Region, the board and I are trying to turn adversity into opportunity. Some of our progress to date:
Working with our seven chapters, we have begun sharing online content with the entire IR community. Since March there have been more than 30 events online, all offering continuing education credits. Some of these have been exceptional talks. There are even some virtual building tours which are amazing! To see upcoming events look here. We are in the process of making the recordings of past events available, and these should be online in the next 2-3 weeks.
We have also implemented the infrastructure to enable us to offer these past events on-demand and to count for CES credits – which requires the viewer to answer a quiz. We are starting to populate this database, and we hope to roll-out the on-demand program in the autumn. We will eventually organize this in a searchable manner by topic and theme, and this will be a world-class resource available free to all IR members.
We held our first every virtual ‘Keynote Lecture’ last month featuring Dr. Ken Yeang, Hon. FAIA. It was a fabulous and inspiring talk. I encourage those of you that didn’t see it live to view the recording available through our website here.
The planning for the Virtual Conference is in full flow. It will be on November 17-21 with the theme of ‘Catalyzing Change’, with sub-themes around climate change, health & wellbeing, and social injustice. There will be 12 hours of live programming on each of the five conference days. Each event will be re-broadcast precisely 12 hours later, thereby allowing viewers in all time zones to view the content. There will be lectures, interactive workshops, virtual building tours, keynote lectures, annual meeting, and design awards. If you are interested in participating, please let us know. The conference will be free for all IR members.
As part of the Virtual Conference, we will have a ‘Women in Architecture’ series done in partnership with the RIBA. We will also have presentations by several Honorary FAIAs where they will showcase some of their fabulous design work. The IR Design Award winners will also be announced, and an extended program including virtual building tours of the buildings will be on offer! We will also have some sessions and mentoring opportunities for Emerging Professionals.
Finally, our Country Representative program is gaining significant momentum. We now have representatives in place in 15 countries and 3 regions. These representatives are reaching out to all AIA members and organizing events in their countries. Please see the full listing of Country and Regional Representatives here.
The International Region Design Awards are opening now, with a submission date at the end of September. We encourage you to enter your projects. It is not the size or cost that matters – rather the ideas. Last year, one of the 2 Honor awards (the highest level of award) went to the financially-modest, but otherwise exquisite, Jiffy Office HQ designed by Russell Dandeniya from Sri Lanka. Have a look at it here.
I welcome the opportunity of hearing from you directly. If you have a suggestion on how we can improve things, or if you would like to participate in the activities of the International Region, please contact me on my email address below.
I wish you all health and happiness.
Lester Korzilius; FAIA, RIBA
AIA International Region; President
lester.korzilius@aiainternational.org
