John Flynn, AIA
AIA Oregon Board President

Hello, Colleagues –

Happy Summer Solstice! Yes, today marks the first day of Summer and I hope you are all looking forward to some fun outdoor time in the coming months.

I’m writing today to update you on the latest on ELEVATE, our ongoing set of strategic actions designed to strengthen and serve our membership and the Oregon architecture community at large. You may recall that ELEVATE was born from the work of our AIA Oregon Headquarters Task Force. This group was tasked to listen and determine what membership wanted from its state chapter – whether those wants included a bricks-and-mortar HQ or not. Final recommendations from the Task Force, adopted by the Board of Directors at the start of this year, began with a decision not to pursue owned or leased physical space. Ensuant to this decision were eight additional recommendations – 3 identified as “foundational” and 5 more, characterized as “expansive.”

Heather Wilson
AIA Oregon EVP/CEO

A Legacy of Duality: The Octagon, AIA Oregon, and the Road to Inclusion

The AIA24 Conference on Architecture just finished in Washington DC last week. Hopefully, you were able to follow along on our social media while staff and AIA Oregon leadership posted updates and highlights, sharing inside moments from the only annual conference for architecture and design on a global scale. It’s always a good time to catch up with AIA friends from across the nation and for me, it is always an opportunity for education and deeper understanding of our members’ experience. This year, I was also able to tour the AIA Headquarters renovation - recently unveiled as the AIA Global Center for Architecture and Design. I was excited to see the renovations underway and get a sense of what was to come.

Kaarin Knudson, AIA
Eugene Architect Running for Mayor

Kaarin Knudson, AIA, is an architect, educator, writer, and housing advocate—she’s also a candidate to be the next Mayor of Eugene. (Ballots are due by Tuesday, May 21 and Knudson is endorsed by nearly 300 community officials and organizations.)

Kaarin has been a leader on housing issues and sustainable urban design since founding her own firm and the housing advocacy organization Better Housing Together in 2017. She teaches the graduate workshop on urban design at the University of Oregon and recently co-authored The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook, a comprehensive textbook of best practices to address sustainability in cities. Over the past 20 years, she has served on numerous nonprofit boards and statewide advisory committees, and worked on architecture projects that have earned AIA design awards at the interior, building, neighborhood, and urban scales.