President’s Message ~ February 2012

Photo: 2012 Board Planning Retreat

by Maria Ogrydziak, AIA
2012 Chapter President

I am delighted and honored to serve as Chapter President this coming year, working with an energized and dedicated Board, and supported by an incredible staff.

As I start the year, I want to give a special thanks to our outgoing President, Bruce, for his active and engaged leadership, in encouraging and enabling valuable partnerships for the Chapter – including with Region Builders and with the City of Sacramento public policy makers – and his commitment to making sure that architects are included at the table so we can affect our destiny.

Thanks also to those involved in the amazing array of Chapter programs and presentations that engage our own membership, allied professionals, and  interested members of the public.  These events are vital, as engaged participants become active advocates for good design.

Two of the most important things the AIA can do for architects are to promote the work of its members and to educate the public and potential clients about the value of excellent design, how it happens, and why architecture matters.  To that end I hope to build upon the groundwork already established and expand the Chapter’s role in engaging the public in active dialogue about the role of architecture in our region.  We want to showcase and celebrate the work of Chapter members, demonstrating how we as architects shape and define live, work, play, shop, dine, learn, worship, or other environments here in the Central Valley. We want to explore how the built spaces resonate with and complement the particular qualities of the region and how the context informs the architecture to create a unique sense of place.

The theme for this year is the “Identity of the Central Valley/Sacramento Region”.  As part of this effort, I’d like to thank Richard Rich, public member of our Board, for partnering with me to initiate a salon to explore this topic.  In October, we will launch a two-week Architecture Festival modeled after a successful template begun by the San Francisco Chapter ten years ago, and copied by other cities like Seattle.  The festival will include a Ted program, house tours, larger building tours, lectures, and films, and we are hopefully anticipating good media coverage.  This festival is an opportunity to answer the questions:  Why would a client choose to work with a Central Valley architect?  What is the architecture of this Region?

We are in a pivotal role during a time of transition for our profession, in the midst of a rapidly changing world.  I view this as an opportunity and believe it’s an excellent moment for architects to be engaged in the re-shaping of the rules that govern our work.  Green building codes are being written, new technologies and building methods are being introduced, and historic preservation rules are being re-examined.  With the regulations currently in place, sometimes it is hard to tell one community from another.  But, regions are different and the rules governing how we design in them should encourage the articulation of these differences.

Architects design holistically.  If we architects wish to be able to create solutions that are unique to a region, and work with new and emerging technologies and processes, we have to take an active part in shaping the rules and codes.

The Central Valley is our region.  It seems appropriate and timely to focus this year on understanding the Valley and how we might best work in it, perhaps by thinking in terms of Critical Regionalism, as defined by British architect and historian Kenneth Frampton.  The website critical-regionalism.com explains it well:  “In the face of globalization, how might the idea of the local – the regional – still exist?  Critical Regionalism seeks and offers new ways in which we can conceive of the local as it interacts with the global and the implications of such an exchange…a bricolage of discourse and analysis that challenges anew the effects of culture, geography, history and politics as they interact with our senses of space and place.”

I look forward to the coming year and the opportunity to help make the qualities of Central Valley architecture visible.  Architects shape lives, hopes and dreams. Architecture is an amazing profession.

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