Page 7 - Winter_2020

OUR YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY CONTRIBUTORS

The final issue of the magazine each year usually gives me a
Bradley W. Johnson chance to take stock of what happened over the previous 12 Steven K. Dickens, AIA, LEED AP
(“It Takes a Village” and “Rollin’ on
months. In last year’s Winter issue, this column included my
the River), is senior associate with
personal discoveries such as a newly acquired passion for
Eric Colbert & Associates.
squash, along with important developments for AIA|DC, such
as its adoption of a new set of design excellence criteria for our Denise Liebowitz (“Schools on a
competitions that addresses climate action. Mission”), formerly with the National
Developments like those now seem quite distant due to the Capital Planning Commission, is a
extraordinary, pandemic-dominated year we are now completing. frequent contributor to ARCHITECTUREDC.
I haven’t played squash since February, because it’s an indoor
game and Washington’s daily number of new confirmed COVID cases, while fairly G. Martin Moeller, Jr., Assoc. AIA
low compared to those of certain other U.S. jurisdictions, is still high enough to make
shared indoor activities risky. And while our design competitions employed the new (“The Convertible House,” “Up in
design excellence criteria, the importance of that seemed overshadowed by the fact Front,” “Passive-House Aggressive,”
that all of our juries and subsequent award ceremonies had to be conducted virtually. and “Reclaiming the Fifth Plane”), is an
It was a year filled with questions about when the pandemic will end, and what our independent curator and writer. He is
the editor of ARCHITECTUREDC.
WELCOME Ronald O’Rourke (“A Healthy
next normal may be.
Regard for Design” and “The Boating
Party”) is a regular contributor to

Living with the pandemic has often been saddening and exhausting, but there ARCHITECTUREDC. His father, Jack
O’Rourke, was an architect in San
have been a few silver linings. Some friends of ours have become closer through Francisco for more than four decades.
weekly shared dinners on FaceTime, and my 100-year-old mother, who spent her
centennial birthday without her family because of travel restrictions, was nicely fêted
(at a safe distance) by her neighbors. She has since learned to use Zoom, and in some
ways, she’s been able to spend more time with her family since March than she might
have in a usual year.
In spite of the pandemic—and in some ways because of it—the Chapter and the
Foundation have been more active than ever. Conducting our classes and other events
virtually has reduced travel times for attendees essentially to zero, increasing our
attendance numbers—in some cases quite substantially. Our Fall Design Fête, which
celebrates honorees and project award winners, was held virtually this year, and it
was viewed by many more people than have attended our past in-person fêtes. We’re
looking forward to holding more events and otherwise connecting more frequently
with local organizations, such as the American Society of Landscape Architects
(ASLA), and more-distant ones, such as the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
We’re also using this time to address certain challenges we face as an organization,
such as increasing our diversity. It’s no big secret that the AIA is a majority white and
majority male organization. So how do we change that for the future? Part of that involves
stating our values clearly, and as one measure for doing that, the photographs at right
show our statement on social justice as it currently runs along the almost 60-foot
length of our front windows. To cite another action, the Chapter is now employing
JUST, which is a program from the International Living Future Institute that helps
organizations optimize policies for improving social equity and enhancing
employee engagement.
At the end of a year in which the pandemic took the lives of loved ones and
friends, caused huge economic pain, and disrupted our lives in countless other ways,
this issue of ARCHITECTUREDC strikes a determined and optimistic note by focusing
on projects with strong sustainable and resilient design features—in other words,
projects that will help us all over the long run. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about
these projects, and that you’ll soon be able to visit them in person safely, with the
pandemic behind us.

As always, we love to hear from you, so please drop us a line with your comments.

Mary Fitch, AICP, Hon. AIA
Publisher
mfitch@aiadc.com
@marycfitch
WELCOME 5