Regional and Urban Design Committee

 View Only

RUDC Letter from the Chair (January 2025)

  

In her reflective December article, Kimberly Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC – AIA’s 100th President – wrote about how she and AIA leaders helped secure the future of the Institute and our profession. “More Members,” “More Money,” and “More Mission” were the focus of 2024 and created a foundation for us all in 2025. In order to secure our future, change is inevitable, and the AIA Knowledge Communities, including Regional & Urban Design (RUDC), will be in the process of evolution this year. As the 2025 Chair, I’m excited for this opportunity to help chart our future in collaboration with the RUDC Leadership Group (including six new leaders!) and with all of you. Therefore, we want to hear from you! Please engage on the AIA Community Hub, find us on social media, connect with one of our leaders, or email me directly (sarcher@land-collective.com). RUDC exists to provide education, networking, and resources to our broad community of architects and allied professionals engaged in urban design and planning.

Within my studio and our projects, we often talk about “managing change” for the communities and landscapes we plan and design. We recognize that every place is composed of layers of context and history: geological, ecological, sociological, cultural, etc. We, as urban designers, planners, architects, and landscape architects, have the responsibility to work alongside communities to ensure that public spaces, buildings, and landscapes remain relevant to the people that inhabit those places every day. Having worked at an architectural firm recognized for its expertise in historic preservation for a decade, I not only quickly appreciated the role of preservation in our cities, but I also realized that there is often a public misperception of what the real goal of preservation is. Preservation is actually much more about change than suspending a place in any single time. It embeds an ambition to actively layer histories, systems, and culture on top of one another to tell more complex stories about how we live collectively with each other. When we erase and start over, we lose something, and often those stories and systems endure beneath the surface and seep up to reemerge through destruction or trauma – just review stories of racially motivated urban renewal in the mid-1900s, levees and flood walls battling new volumes of water with climate change, or power grids and infrastructure systems failing as they’re expanded to reach new areas of sprawl, to name a few.

Therefore, we designers know change is required to create more inclusive, more functional, and more resilient places. However, it’s never from a blank slate; it begins with existing buds that blossom into something new – and maybe show us something unexpected. As RUDC springs into 2025, we are building on an incredible legacy of events, people, and places that have carried our mission before us, and we hope you’ll continue with us on this journey. New happenings, old events in new formats, and fresh collaborations are ahead. Stay tuned and connect with us!

Wishing everyone an incredible 2025!

Scott Archer, AIA, AICP, LEED AP ND

2025 RUDC Chair

0 comments
8 views

Permalink