Ben Arico, AIA
AIA Portland Director-Elect
I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon and went to film school for my undergraduate degree at the College of Santa Fe, in New Mexico. While studying film, I learned how the cultural identity of the time and place manifests itself into the film medium. In many ways these messages are subconscious. As I was completing my master’s degree in architecture at the University of New Mexico, I could see striking similarities in the way that architecture speaks to us through the boundaries and facades of our environment. I appreciate how our environment is not just designed by architects, but that our community creates architecture as an expression of itself physically, economically, and socially. We get to see who we are by what we make space for.
When I started working at Bora Architects a little over five years ago, I was overwhelmed with the scale and complexity of the firm’s projects. My focus was on my work, and I didn’t lift my head up for a few years. One of my favorite aspects of working at Bora is the collaborative dialogue that happens as the project develops. There is an opportunity for everyone to contribute and engage. Through this process of listening, learning, and communicating, I gained knowledge and confidence. It became clear to me that sharing experiences is a key factor in the professional development of members of the design community.
With my comfort level increasing, I began to see how the design community extends beyond the office. Our offices are not separate objects, but part of a porous matrix that connects us all together. In March of 2019 I started coordinating the AIA Oregon InProcess Lecture Series with a goal of integrating my interests with the larger design community of Portland. It has opened my eyes to the incredible depth and richness of design cultivation that occurs in the fabric of our city. InProcess creates a positive exchange of ideas and learning experiences that strengthen the community as a whole.
InProcess is a lecture series based on design professionals sharing the process of how they work. What makes the series so successful is that in every lecture there are two presenters: and architect and a trade partner. The trade partner can be from any profession. We’ve spoken with photographers, fabricators, furniture makers, sound designers, ceramic and fabric artists; just to name a few.
Each presenter gets 20 minutes to share aspects of how they work. InProcess isn’t so much about showing the finished product as it is about showing the steps of progression. We get to see the iterations of the work and talk about the tools used to study the design. We get to hear about team structures, office dynamics, and how budgets, schedules, and client relationships influence the project.
InProcess exposes us to the huge variety of design work that takes place in Portland and throughout the Northwest. There are so many different ways to accomplish good design, and so many different scales of work in various disciplines. For example. the type of thinking required to mass-produce an object is extremely different than the creation of a one-off installation for a specific environment. We can learn so much by applying lessons from one situation into another. Hearing about how designers have navigated the constraints of their work field is incredibly valuable. The architect and the trade partner are often thematically related, and we have seen some fantastic dialogues generated through these juxtapositions.
The final 20 minutes of an InProcess Lecture is where the community gets to participate in the dialogue. Questions are taken from the audience and often morph into additional dialogues between the presenters or influence additional questions. This exchange of ideas, perspectives, and insights is where our community builds collective knowledge.
InProcess acts as a framework that invigorates and empowers all of our designers to better serve the people of Oregon.
As we continue our transition to a single state chapter, the Programs Committee began planning for the Portland-based InProcess series to be broadcast to all sections, and to encourage other communities to develop their own version. Our current situation with only virtual events accelerated the process, and for the foreseeable future, InProcess will be broadcast through Zoom as part of the AIA Oregon Digital Design Series. I would encourage all of you to attend as many of these events as you can.
The next InProcess event is Wednesday, May 13 at 5pm. You can email me at arico@bora.co if you would like more information on the series, if you are interested in sharing your work, or if you have suggestions for future lectures.
