Sam Uccello, AIA
AIA Southern Oregon Section Director
Hello Oregon Architects and friends of Architects. My name is Sam Uccello, and I am the Section Director for Southern Oregon. I have been a licensed architect for over 24 years, an Oregon resident, and a member of the Oregon AIA since 2015.
A little about myself, I attended and received my degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. This included a year overseas study at the Ecole D’Beaux Arts in Versailles France. During my time in Versailles I traveled extensively in Western and Eastern Europe, including Russia. I have had many successful projects in southern Oregon as well as in the Caribbean, Cypress, Spain, and many on the eastern United States.
Southern Oregon has so much to offer including outdoor activities, world class wineries, the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, and a thriving architectural community. We have a diverse range of Architecture firms that are responsible for all types and sizes of projects.
As a group in Southern Oregon, we are striving to showcase our Architects and projects. For example, last year we had a successful People’s Choice Awards. Southern Oregon has not had a People’s Choice Awards in a few years and with the success of the one we had last year we hope to make it an annual event.
We are also hopeful we can start in-person meetings by the end of summer or early fall. We have had many suggestions on finding venues to hold our first in-person meeting. Since we have so many world class wineries, we may start there.
Last year there were devastating fires in Phoenix and Talent which have kept many Architects in our area busy with rebuilding. Last year Curt Wilson and Andrew Owen were invited to participate in a radio program to respond to a misleading letter to the editor on rebuilding Talent and Phoenix. It was a successful way for our professional organization to set the record straight on rebuilding after a natural disaster.
We have had discussions about working with Re-make Talent, which is an organization working to facilitate information for the community to rebuild. The web address is http://remaketalent.org.
One of the items that Architects may be able to help with is to contribute generic house plans for the library they are setting up on their web site. In this process we are also learning from Rebuild Paradise, an organization responding to the California fires in 2018.
Southern Oregon emerging professionals are working together to help each other in the process of getting licensed. There has been a lot of sharing about the way that the new testing is being conducted via online testing. I have heard some positive responses to online testing. Also, the emerging professionals recently accomplished an in-person visit of a project under construction. This is something that we will strive to continue with the emerging professionals.
As always, we wish to bring in more Architects to AIA Oregon from the Southern Oregon section. We constantly reach out to individuals and firms that are not currently part of AIA and encourage them to join and participate in all the activities the AIA Oregon has to offer.
I encourage anyone to reach out directly to me with comments, concerns and info on upcoming events and programs at designdept@SBJames.com and remember to register for the Thursdays @ Three where there is so much information about AIA Oregon and the different sections, including our own Southern Oregon Section.
Thank you.
Samuel Uccello