Message from the AIA Oregon Grassroots Delegation

Report from Grassroots 2021
By Kathy Austin and Curt Wilson, on behalf Amy Vohs, Kaley Fought, Colin Dean, and Sam Uccello

AIA Grassroots 2021 is occurring this week as a virtual conference from Feb 16 to 18.  The AIA Oregon delegation includes board members from each section; Amy Vohs (President, Portland), Kaley Fought, Treasurer, Salem), Colin Dean (Director, Eugene), Samuel Uccello (Director, Southern Oregon), Katherine Austin (Director, Bend) and Curt Wilson (EVP, Eugene)  This is our collected update on the highlights.

Grassroots 2021 is AIA’s premier leadership and advocacy event for chapter staff and volunteers. The theme, “Bring It Home,” will address critical issues facing the architecture profession, including COVID-19, racial injustice, and climate change.

Day 1 – Feb 16

Federal Legislation.  Grassroots Day 1 is when AIA members from across the country take over the halls of congress to advocate on behalf of issues important to architects.  This year we invaded, through Zoom, the apartment of congressional staffers working from home.  Meetings were held with all seven of the Oregon delegation, although Rep. Susan Bonamici was the only elected official that was available.  Nonetheless, it was an impactful day to discuss our priority of Green Building Infrastructure. This is an initiative that aligns climate action, COVID response, and a boost to the economy to dedicate infrastructure spending on buildings and to prioritize projects that meet IECC Reach Code goals.

Day 2 – Feb 17

Design Thinking.  The day kicked off with a keynote presentation by Dan Roam, an author/speaker that focuses on visual and design thinking.  We participated in a diagramming exercise based on the question “As an AIA chapter leader, what do you want to accomplish in 2021”.  This was a super fun session as we were exposed to a wonderful format of organizing our thoughts through diagrams.  See below for some of the results.

EDI and Belonging.  The midday session was a presentation by the inspirational event headliner, Stacey Abrams, on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Having interacted with Architects when Stacy worked in the Office of the Mayor of Atlanta, she identified our profession as better suited to understand the needs of underrepresented communities more than anyone. As Creatives, we are in an ideal position to address the health safety and welfare of marginalized communities and move to find solutions that benefit all.

One of the afternoon sessions focused on organizations in our profession with initiatives addressing the intersection of the pandemic and social justice.  Most of us are aware of NOMA, but it was a good overview of their Project Pipeline Mission to “..empower young people to affect change in their community through design”.  We also learned about an organization dedicated to helping members of our profession are that limited by little to no hearing, World Deaf Architecture, and the activities of the American Indian Council of Architects and Engineers (AICEA).  This group is most active in the Southwest, but looking to connect with students and practitioners in the Pacific Northwest.

Day 3 – Feb 18

COTE. The day started off with Katherine Hayhoe, Internationally renowned climate scientist from Texas addressing the critical issue of communication. She identified that everyone has certain values and that just identifying facts will not change minds. The urgency of today's problems from Covid-19, keeping one’s job and home, feeding one’s family, to freezing to death in Texas are all connected to Climate Change. To engage everyone to agree on the need for action we must address our shared values.…

C3 Architects as Climate Activists. This was a densely packed breakout session with multiple excellent presenters from Philadelphia and Berkeley California. All were members of COTE at the local and national level. All spoke about the many ways each were reaching out to their members, advocating at the local and state level. Highly recommend watching the recording when it becomes available, there was simply too much to summarize. We can all take action and work together to improve our built environment on many levels.

Equity sessions

The last session of the day was an update on the Regions Task Force Report.  The AIA Board of Directors is recommending that we move from a Regions-based governance model to a State-based governance model, and we expect to vote on this change at the June 2021 business meeting.  It the resolution is successful, we can expect some of the changes will happen before the end of this year, including selecting the AIA Oregon Strategic Council representative.  Our transition to a single state chapter means that the transition to the state governance model should be fairly smooth for us.  If you want to learn more, contact Curt Wilson at cwilson@aiaoregon.org.

Design Thinking Exercises

Design Thinking Exercises

Message from a Member of the City of Eugene Sustainability Commission

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Kelsey Zlevor
Planning Consultant, Cameron McCarthy Landscape Architecture and Planning
Member of the City of Eugene Sustainability Commission

“Lessons from Oregon's Historic Wildfire Season”

Originally published as a Viewpoint on the American Planning Association website 

If someone told me a year ago I would spend part of 2020 masked and door-knocking in a pandemic, carrying my inhaler to combat smoke irritation, I would have thought that sounded more like a dystopian novel than real life. And yet, that was my memory of September: delivering meals at the Graduate Hotel in Eugene, Oregon, to families and seniors who had been evacuated from their homes.

That month, the Holiday Farm wildfire ravaged the ancestral land of the Kalapuya, Molalla, Winefelly, and Yoncalla tribes, as well as land of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, otherwise known as part of the Willamette Valley.  The fire, one of several, was a disaster fueled in part by reduced rainfall and suppression of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in current forest and fire management practices. The fire—much like the COVID pandemic—had disastrous impacts because it hinged on vulnerability.  A disaster, in the words of Lori Peek, Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, “happens when a natural hazard collides with vulnerable people and vulnerable infrastructure.” Vulnerability is a spectrum, and September underscored that increasingly more of us sit on it.

Americans are often indoctrinated to imagine environmental refugees as “other”: people we don’t know living in faraway places. But the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research defines environmental refugees as “people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat because of a marked environmental disruption that jeopardizes their existence and/or seriously effects the quality of their life.” Environmental refugees are our neighbors, friends, and families. In the Willamette Valley community, the Holiday Farm wildfire displaced ~2,500 people, resulting in a wave of environmental refugees, some unhoused temporarily and some permanently.

Planning with those populations is no far-off challenge. It is here, and it is now. And with the compounding national challenges of a pandemic, an economic recession, and a shortage of affordable housing stock, the added layer of environmental displacement will only continue to put a strain on the ability of individuals and families to achieve stability in all its forms. These barriers are even more significant for the communities society has long since disenfranchised because of their race, class, and ability.

Responding to all of these pressures will be an immense job—but it is also an invitation to drastically reimagine who we are as planners, and what it means to serve communities in the Anthropocene. 

 A new era of planning

In the wake of the Willamette Valley’s trauma, a group of architects, AIA Eugene and community leaders formed  the Holiday Farm Advisory Committee. Made of architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers, professors, and allied professionals, we are currently working with leaders of the McKenzie Community Development Corporation in a pro bono capacity to help re-establish communities impacted by the fires.  Coming off of my weekends with the Red Cross and supporting mutual aid efforts in September, I felt overwhelmed and lost as to how to move beyond triage and sustain momentum towards long-term recovery as a young professional and community member looking to volunteer.  Learning about the formation of and subsequently joining the Advisory Committee helped me piece together what I felt in the moment: we needed a place where agile professionals could strategically pair key skills with local needs outside of the typical contract-based construct.  The needs are constantly evolving, and the Committee’s response is based on the leveraged abilities, resources, and relationships of those who are present.

While still in the early stages of partnership, this committee highlights the professional response needed at local levels, especially from private practitioners and academia. And we are not alone—many small towns across the U.S. have formed systems for providing professional aid in the wake of increasing disaster.

I hope these responses are indicative of a new era of radical grassroots planning, one that is grounded in collaborative activism. Planning that not only prioritizes the most vulnerable in the face of climate change, but also seeks to build systems of support beyond fee-for-service structures. That honors and relationally incorporates Indigenous knowledge for stewarding the land we occupy, and acknowledges that everyday land-use action is climate action, because where and how we develop land impacts community resiliency.

How these principles manifest in each community will be determined by the people who live there, but my experience highlights that we must ask ourselves what we can give, and how we can get started. I am neither a refugee, nor a climate change expert. But I am a planner that has entered a profession with a weighty inheritance: the moral imperative to creatively seek ways to root social justice and climate activism into the bedrock of our profession in the post-2020 world. Just as we must adapt to our new climate, our profession’s way of serving must adapt, too.

It’s been several months since I was pushing food carts down the halls of the Graduate Hotel. In all that time, I’ve never stopped thinking about the future of planning, and a question posed by author and activist Naomi Klein: “History knocked on your door… Did you answer?”

Kelsey Zlevor is a planning consultant at Cameron McCarthy Landscape Architecture and Planning, and appointed member of the City of Eugene Sustainability Commission

Message from 35 AIA Oregon Fellows

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Jonah Cohen, FAIA
On behalf of 35 AIA Oregon Fellows

Something Critical is Missing from Portland’s Future Vision

At this difficult moment, exacerbated by COVID, economic uncertainty, political polarization and climatic extremes, it has become very clear that something critical is missing from the noble quality of life vision we aspire to create. While Portland has succeeded in executing an enviable and beautiful physical infrastructure, we failed to match it with a social infrastructure that fully incorporates cultural and racial diversity and economic fairness and as a result we are now witnessing a level of frustrated rage and social breakdown not seen for decades. In the near term, we support the efforts of Rose City Downtown Collective to clean up and revitalize our city. There are important, longer term goals to be addressed as well. So, what are these and what is to be done?

We believe it begins with optimism. This is a unique moment in time with much possibility for our entire community. Together we have a long history of creative innovation. In the same way that we modeled a healthy balance between vital urbanism, agrarian abundance and protected wilderness, we believe we can once again lead the way in the creation of a society that advances that foundation, and values fairness and equity as much as progress. This however requires a compelling guiding vision. As architects we know that seemingly intractable problems can be solved through an iterative process of exploration which over time can lead to highly effective and self-evident solutions.

The first step is to convene a representative group of constituents who are committed to constructive and respectful creation of a shared vision. Information is then gathered which honestly considers all factors affecting and affected by the outcome - including existing strengths and assets which should not be lost but built upon. Next is consensus about specific goals, aspirations and measures of success. With that firm baseline, extensive alternative solutions are imagined which are then thoroughly debated, ultimately to be championed or discarded. The hoped-for result is a shared understanding and passionate endorsement of a chosen vision with which to move forward.

It is important to note that there is strong precedent for this model. Many of Oregon’s most successful past innovations, most notably the 1972 Portland Downtown Plan, sprung from grassroots creativity by a powerful alliance of business and community interests that inspired bold implementation by our elected officials. And while their intentions are honorable, the reality is that our current leaders are frankly overwhelmed with daunting immediate challenges limiting their time and ability to imagine a detailed pathway to a brighter future.

Since spring, as our country has faced a perfect storm of unconstrained pandemic, racial justice outrage, economic collapse and unprecedented polarization, our state's modest identity and progressive reputation has been both amplified and sullied as it has garnered extraordinary national and even international notoriety as a hotbed of political and climatic extremism. In addition to extensive negative press, our formerly vibrant downtown core, like many other cities ,is experiencing reduced business occupancy, boarded up storefronts and many closed restaurants. Most heartbreaking of all is an extensive and highly visible houseless population. And if that was not enough, our planet’s relentless propensity for balance ignited unprecedented forest fires which for over a week gave many parts of Oregon the dubious honor of having the most unhealthy air in the world.

Not surprisingly, this has left many of us with a profound sense of loss. But Oregon has a reputation for addressing daunting challenges in innovative ways and this is a moment that demands creative action. As architects, we tackle problems of vision and design every day – but reaching beyond today’s limitations to realize a future for our city that once again invites emulation around the world, we need to marshal the best talents across our entire community. Our purpose is to advocate for a broadly based initiative to forge a vision and a way forward for Portland beyond the dispiriting experiences of 2020.

So in recognition of this conundrum and singular moment in time, we as passionate stewards of this extraordinary place we call home are hereby calling upon our fellow citizens of good will representing all facets of our diverse community to come together and lead by example in imagining a better way of being, where we can all equally flourish and fulfill our potential.

Respectfully submitted by the following individual Oregon Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in their capacity as caring citizens of Oregon.

Jonah Cohen FAIA; Paddy Tillett FAIA; Larry Bruton FAIA; Kent Duffy FAIA; Don Stastny FAIA; Martha Peck Andrews FAIA; Linda Barnes FAIA; Anthony Belluschi FAIA; Doug Benson FAIA; John Blumthal FAIA; Stan Boles FAIA; Will Bruder FAIA; Tom Clark FAIA;  Joseph Collins FAIA; Tim Eddy FAIA; Val Glitsch FAIA; Ron Gronowski FAIA; Mark Hall FAIA; Nels Hall FAIA; Bob Hastings FAIA; Alec Holser FAIA; Jim Kalvelage FAIA; Alison Kwok FAIA; Michael McCulloch FAIA; Nancy Merryman FAIA; Otto Poticha FAIA; Heinz Rudolf FAIA; Jeff Scherer FAIA; Jon Schleuning FAIA; Alan Scott FAIA; Bob Thompson FAIA; Michael Tingley FAIA; Ned Vaivoda FAIA; Jan Willemse FAIA; Bill Wilson FAIA

For more information on this subject, see the article in the Portland Architecture blog by Brian Libby.