by Jake Elliott, AIA
AIACV Emerging Professionals Director
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend the AIA Grassroots conference in Washington DC as the emerging professionals representative on the Board. The Grassroots conference is focused on leadership and advocacy, and takes place Washington DC every other year to allow attendees to take part in the AIA’s advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill. It was nice to see how active national AIA is–we don’t always see or hear about national efforts at the local level, so it was good to see the positive impact our dues have on the industry and built environment. It was also a super fun, seriously cold, and eye-opening experience. Below are a few of my takeaways from the conference.
National Level Advocacy
There were two primary advocacy topics at this year’s Grassroots conference (and really for AIA national in general)–School Safety and Energy Efficiency. These are very broad topics, but the advocacy efforts were actually very specific. Having never lobbied before, the thought seemed pretty daunting at first. I envisioned our team presenting the issues in front of the House of Representatives with them slamming their gavel and forcing us to leave–fortunately for us it was nothing like that at all.
The morning of our charge on Capitol Hill, the conference attendees gathered in the US Capitol Visitor Center where we received a briefing on the issues by a former congressman and AIA leadership. They explained the lobbying process and the intent of the advocacy day, before discussing the specific topics.
- School Safety — This topic has received a lot of attention in recent years, but unfortunately the primary resource schools have are federal grants that fund solutions such as metal detectors, security cameras, armed guards, etc.–solutions that don’t exactly promote a positive learning environment for students. The position we were advocating for was two-fold; allow the grant funding to pay for architect design services, and develop an information clearinghouse that would act as a repository for successful strategies that would lead to safer schools. The first element, allowing grant funding to be used on design services, is of particular importance because it provides schools the opportunity to maximize their funding in a way that would improve their school experience without creating a correctional environment.
- Energy Efficiency — We’ve all heard the term energy efficiency, and practicing in California means that we’ve experience the costs of energy efficient products and materials on our projects. As you may be aware, there are tax incentives that allow building owners to write-off costs associated with energy efficiency, which can help ease the burden on building owners paying for this equipment. The unfortunate part about these tax incentives is they only target new construction. With over 80% of the United States existing building stock being constructed prior to modern energy codes, the focus for the AIA is allow these tax incentives on existing buildings to promote building owners to modernize their equipment and building materials.
Our group met with four members of congress (and/or their staff), and received very positive responses. It was interesting to see how many meetings the members of congress attend each day–sometimes in conference rooms, at a waiting room coffee table, meeting with constituents in the halls on their way from one meeting to another. Each member was very engaged, asked a lot of questions, and our group really felt that the members had our back on the issues going forward.
Leadership from Within
At another Grassroots event later in the conference, there was a panel discussion of several mayors throughout the country, made it even more clear that our skills as architects are unique and highly desired in our communities at a variety of levels. The discussions during this session talked about the unique skills that architects have that need to be more widely utilized in the design and development of our cities–not just the buildings in them. This isn’t to say that every city or town needs a full-time city architect–this wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate. The conclusion of the discussion was that there are many opportunities for architects to get involved in the decision-making processes in our cities, and local officials are quite open to hearing the thoughts and concerns of architects.
Some of the options discussed during this panel were having a city architect position, having an architect on the planning commission, on design review or neighborhood association boards, and soliciting architect involvement in developing and reviewing general, specific, and master plans. The key to this was that architects have a specific problem-solving skills that can aid in these processes, such as visualizing solutions three dimensionally. Moreover, because much of our work involves coordination of a multi-disciplinary practice, architects have the ability to visualize a wide range of implications including planning, engineering, traffic, environmental, and other large-scale decisions that otherwise might be overlooked. As more people move into urban cores, our involvement will become even more important because the decisions our cities make will affect more and more people.
Networking
As they say, it’s a small world. During college I was very involved in the AIAS, and at Grassroots I ran into a handful of old colleagues.. It was neat to share experiences of not only our work life, but dive deeper into the topics of the conference with a lens shaped by our varying professional experiences. Hearing about response efforts to regional natural disasters throughout the county was particularly inspiring, and is illustrative of the point that architects have a larger role in our communities than designing buildings for our clients.