Message from an Emerging Professional

Ryan Al-Schamma
Associate AIA

My name is Ryan Al-Schamma, I’m a recent graduate of the University of Oregon’s B.Arch program (Grad 2020), and have just completed my first year in the profession.. During working hours I focus on Federal urban planning and architecture projects around the country, but during my free time I love road and mountain biking (hit me up, I’m looking for riding buddies), cooking, and installation design. For this installment of Message From, I’m going to be writing about a recent installation I completed with a small team, called Stay ON the Grass.

Stay ON the Grass was birthed from a medical article I read last winter that pointed out the decline in mental health for individuals in dense urban areas during the novel COVID-19 pandemic, versus individuals in more rural areas. On separate occasions phoning friends in larger cities than Eugene, I learned about the universal frustration over the lack of green space, and feelings of depression and isolation due to the inaccessibility to usable green space, and thus the lack of opportunities to just EXIST outside comfortably. In the face of a global pandemic, the urban design and architecture that is supposed to serve us proved to be futile, and even hostile towards those in dense urban areas, and it was costing many their mental well-being. 

Stay ON the Grass (SOTG) gave me and my team the chance to respond to this need for more usable green space in dense urban areas, opening up a discussion about our current state of urban design and planning which seems to prioritize building austere and uncomfortable paved hardscape instead of usable and calming landscape. 

The concept and form of the installation is derived from the highly instagrammed chalk bubbles outlined in grassy parks in bustling cities in the US such as San Francisco, San Antonio, and New York. The six-foot chalk bubbles separated by six foot aisles act as recreational social distancing bubbles. SOTG is intended to take the place of these bubbles in heavily paved urban areas where grass isn’t easily accessible. The dish of grass and wood rocks and sways when being used due to its concave form, while matching the ideal curvature of our human anatomy when laying in it–a living urban hammock, if you will.

This has been such an enriching experience, and I’m thankful I can think about these things as an architect. While I’m uncertain what the next part of this great adventure will look like, the one thing that I have been steadfast in throughout this process is that we need to design urban settings better. We have taken the easy road so far in relying predominantly on paving to fill the non-essential spaces between structures, so much so that it is engrained in the DNA of how we design; how we think about in-between spaces. Like Frankenstein’s monster, our own creations - the infrastructure and spaces that we use daily - are going to be the things that kill us. That is, if we don’t change the DNA of our designs to incorporate nature in a more interactive and meaningful way. 

Imagine any paved plaza, courtyard, or large urban gathering space–sure, Kezey Square here in downtown Eugene. Now imagine it covered in grass. A comfortable oasis. While I would love to see a million rocking grass pods strewn across cities everywhere, wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t need a raised patch of grass to fix our problems, but rather designed spaces to be comfortable and accommodating to begin with?

Stay ON the Grass will be displayed at the 5th Street Market extension, in front of the Gordon Hotel, until October 13. You’re welcome to leave feedback on the installation here https://forms.gle/uGoQJ2kzLdrfSLf49, or can reach me at by email. More importantly, I hope this keeps the discussion about the DNA of design active and available, because we have so much to work on together. I am looking forward to hearing from my colleagues and potential partners in tackling our issues of sustainability and resilience.

How are you changing the DNA of design?

Message from the AIA Oregon EVP/CEO

Heather Wilson
AIAO Executive Vice President/CEO

A Call for Member Leadership!

The last couple of years have been…something for all of us. I don’t even want to put any sort of descriptor on it because not only would I fail to capture it fully in words but also because there is no one way this time in our lives has been experienced. Every time I want to sink into the way I feel about this moment, this time, how difficult something feels; I am reminded of how, in a moment, things can change for someone and become far more dire than any disconnection I feel. I have much to be grateful for, and I think more than a few of us may feel that way. These reminders are opportunities for me to resettle my mindset into a more grateful space; the disruption does me good.

There are two definitions for disruption: a disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process; and/ or: radical change to an existing industry or market due to technological innovation. We often experience disruption when we have new leadership; when we move to a new location or if we experience some other radical shift. There can often be a lot to gain in the space created around a disruption. Google the term “Positive Disruption” and you’ll find all sorts of resources (probably helpful to people in the design industry) that extol the virtues of positive disruptors – voices in your organization that highlight areas of concern, need and opportunity for improvement.  

I’d like to think that here in AIAO, we have some positive disruptors, and they are often found in leadership. That’s not an accident. Often, AIA leaders start as positive disruptors. It’s how we developed the YAF (Young Architects’ Forum) and EP (Emerging Professionals) programming you know today. It’s how AIA started discussing issues of climate change, sustainability, equity, and justice in the built environment. It’s why you’ve developed a Social Justice Action Plan. We are always seeking new voices for leadership that can highlight our spaces to grow as an organization.

AIA is over 170 years old and we hope the Institute will be able to continue to support professionals as you create an better built world. AIA is, however, a volunteer organization, and it is not only member-focused, it is member-led. I hope that as you read our T@3 newsletter you pay special attention to the calls for leadership (we are also currently asking for nominations to our Board of Directors and AIA National is seeking submissions for the Strategic Council and nominees for the National Associates’ Committee) and tune in to programming we have scheduled around leadership development like the upcoming Thursday Roundtable with Evelyn Lee, FAIA and Je’Nen Chastain, AIA, producers of the podcast “Practice Disrupted.”  It’s going to be a great conversation you won’t want to miss.

Message from the COTE Chair

Erin Lauer, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Fitwel Ambassador
Chair of the AIAO Committee on the Environment

With an increasing number of publications and major news media outlets reporting daily on the effects of climate change on our world’s populations, along with this change recently being reported by National Public Radio (NPR) as the “greatest threat to public health,” the imperative for climate action from each of us as an individual and a professional is now. The AIAO Committee on the Environment (COTE) welcomes and embraces collaboration and thought processes that distinctly progress us to positive sustainable actions.

I learned at the beginning of my career years ago, and then relearned many times again, that my daily work and career choices must involve providing and improving habitable environments for all to enjoy. Sure, I attempted other types of work, but conclusively was not interested. My work must make a difference and positive impact. My work in sustainable design and planning often served more privileged building occupants, but that is how a movement must begin. Computers were not affordable at first and neither were solar panels, but we began somewhere as a society and thus the sustainability movement also progressed to providing healthy environments for a more inclusive population.

As Chair of COTE, I am enthusiastic about how we welcome collaboration as people to share old and new ideas, tools, and resources and share knowledge across a diversity of disciplines, and not architecture alone. This collaboration informs my daily professional practice as sustainability consultant and co-owner of Project Pivot, a women-owned sustainable building consulting practice. I am motivated to listen to the concerns of our clients and building occupants, to hear the stories of how climate change is affecting us all as individuals and those for whom we care all around the region and the world, and to brainstorm together actionable solutions that can be incorporated into early design to mitigate and reverse climate change or to adapt to these changes, while considering the effects on our building inhabitants and surrounding environment.

The Committee on the Environment has had participants join from around the state who voice concerns and give solutions. At the beginning of 2021, we listened to AIAO members express their desire to join our committee, but observed the overlap with other similar committees. Thus we joined committees with the Architecture 2030 Working Group, an Energy Trust of Oregon (ETO) working group focused on bringing firms together to calculate carbon. Together, we joined forces in April 2021. We collaborate with other committees including the Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (CoEDI), Emerging Professionals Committee (EPC), and the Legislative Affairs Committee (LAC), with liaisons from these committees joining our COTE meetings to cross pollinate information and resources.

This collaboration of different committees or groups has evolved our offerings. This year’s Green Champion Summit, on Monday, October 11, focuses on the imperative for climate action now. The year 2030, that year that we have all been benchmarking as the year for net zero carbon design, is just around the corner, less than 9 years away. Climate change is real and is having long-lasting impacts on our most underprivileged communities. We are seeing a rise in houselessness and climate refugees. We are feeling the effects of the forest fires in our western states, with the burning of rainforests that left us with this year’s heat dome. We experience extended power outages, more extreme freezing temperatures in the winter, and longer periods of drought. The Green Champion Summit weaves together voices from around the country and the region, to dive more deeply into the effects of climate change, the data that supports those most affected by this climate change and to develop solutions as individuals and professionals for actionable change over the next year. To continue the conversation, AIAO and COTE will be hosting a panel discussion of ETO Net Zero Fellows in November and introduce the carbon tracking tool with an educational component in the spring of 2022. (If you are a Net Zero Fellow, you may be contacted by a member of COTE in the near future.)

If you care about the effects of climate change on your daily life or the daily life of someone you care about, please join the AIAO Committee on the Environment, to share your ideas, resources and tools and to be inspired to do more today.

“No time like the present…” - John Trusler, 1562

Erin Lauer is Chair of the AIAO Committee on the Environment, a LEED Accredited Professional and Fitwel Ambassador. She is a licensed architect in the State of Oregon and sustainability consultant and owner of Project Pivot, a COBID certified ESB and WBE in the state of Oregon, along with her business partner Julie McEvoy Baines.