Letter from the Editor

from PYLON: FALL 2022

Designers and Books

Greetings to fellow AIA Brooklyn members and other readers.

VP@AIABROOKLYN.ORG 718-797-4242 WWW.AIABROOKLYN.ORG My summer travels included attending the AIA Conference on Architecture ’22 in Chicago in June. Chicago is the perfect city for such an event — it could be considered the center of where American Architecture as we know it today was born and nurtured in the late 1800’s. As many of us know from our architectural history classes, innovations of tall building technology took root there and ended up here in NYC, among other places. I took long walks along The Loop, enjoyed a river tour of the city, had lunch with committee members from other NY State chapters, visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in nearby Oak Park and got to hear keynote speeches by FAIA members Vishaan Chakrabarti, Renée Cheng and Jeanne Gang.

The most memorable experience was on the last day when, along with 7,000 others, I attended a conversation with President Barack Obama and Dan Hart, AIA, who asked him something to the effect of, are there any lessons in leadership from which architects might benefit? Obama’s answer could apply to any situation — with a few people or with many, a leader should recognize the importance of empowering people to work with her or him so they can feel invested in the success of the endeavor; build a culture of accountability, responsibility and effort, and include the staff (too often at the periphery) in the conversation, since they are actually doing the work, taking the notes, writing the reports and letters, and in architecture, doing the drawings; encourage a diversity of ideas as well as that of race, gender etc. to provide a multitude of perspectives from which to tackle a problem and arrive at solutions that succeed.

Speaking of architectural history classes, I’m thinking about architecture school right now for a few reasons as schools open to a new semester. This Pylon issue is dedicated to a local architecture school: the New York City College of Technology, aka City Tech. While reading about the first graduating class of its new five-year B.Arch program, I remember my own experience of starting architecture school as a form of culture shock. As it can be for many students, the language and process of learning to think about architecture as a designer was unlike any school experience I’d ever had before. To this day, I feel conscious of how my own background, experience and economic status affected and still affects my sense of stature in a profession that implies having a direct effect on, or participating in, the built and to-be-built world. Architecture students are not created equal, but the process can help get us closer to equality through education. Education can be a leveler if we allow and encourage it to be.

You will read about the hope and ambition expressed by each student and how they have managed to bring architecture into their vision of their future endeavors. Their professors offer them a culture of curiosity and play within a solid academic program that will launch them to the professional level. We will all benefit from this investment.

Congratulations to the City Tech graduates of the Architecture program and all students at this innovative Brooklyn school.