Reflections on a Year Well Spent
It’s been a strange year to step into the role of AIA Minneapolis President, and while much of the work of the role has been far different than I imagined when I was first nominated, it’s been as rewarding and enlightening as I‘d hoped it could be.
By shifting our knowledge communities, advocacy work, and awards programs to the new, remote paradigm, our board of directors continues to further our ongoing initiatives while contending with the new challenges presented by the pandemic. AIA Minneapolis is a tight-knit professional community, and I credit our relationships with each other for allowing us to not only pivot our working strategies, but to pursue meaningful work addressing issues both kindled by the pandemic and laid bare in its wake.
We’re marshalling the skills of our community to assist building and business owners as they respond to the disruptions we’ve all experienced. Last spring, we facilitated a program to connect restaurant owners with architects to provide several hours of pro bono consultation to replan their dining areas as safer, socially distanced spaces helping them to buy time to keep their businesses viable at a time of crisis.
We’ve also been working to reinvigorate Doors Open Minneapolis, an event in which over 100 buildings open their doors to the public over a May weekend in celebration of our shared built environment. After a very successful debut in 2019, the event — for obvious reasons — was put on hold. As one of the primary sponsors, AIA Minneapolis is organizing to not only come back strong in 2022, but we’re working with St. Paul and Duluth AIA chapters in an ambitious effort to expand the event statewide. We’re also on the lookout for the next executive director of Doors Open. Stay tuned!
Besides working to maintain and improve our perennial programs, the bulk of our efforts have been to reinforce the strategic priorities established by the AIA on a national level to address the interrelated challenges of mitigating climate change and furthering equity, diversity, and inclusion within the profession and built environment.
In the aftermath of the unrest following the murder of George Floyd, our board reached out to community groups in the affected areas to listen and learn how architects might be most helpful in rebuilding these areas, both in response to the immediate needs of the impacted residents and businesses, and to answer the calls to rebuild in a more sustainable, equitable manner. We’ve sought to promote the engagement of BIPOC designers as we work to serve our communities of color impacted by the uprising and the structural inequities that provoked it.
We’ve also convened a task force for the temporary activation of vacant spaces to solicit proposals and direct our resources to explore, through artist interventions and pop-up commercial enterprises, the potential of these underutilized spaces to contribute to the long-term economic and cultural life of their communities.
As much as anything, the work of the board — and in particular that of the President — is to function as a sounding board and amplifier for the concerns of our professional community, and in turn, to understand and articulate back to that community how their concerns, collective knowledge, and unique perspectives might most constructively engage with the broader and more pervasive challenges of the larger communities to which we all belong. One of the most rewarding facets of this role is to partake in the wide-ranging, ambitious conversations that are foundational to the identity of a professional community, and to marshal the talents and energies of that community to make the world a better place. The slow pace of change can be frustrating, but it’s work that cannot be accomplished alone, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to lend a shoulder to the wheel and be a tangible part of something larger. I’m eager to see what else we can accomplish together.
Courtesy of MSP National Organization of Minority Architects (MSP NOMA)