In June of this year at the annual board meeting held at the AIA21 National Conference on Architecture, the membership voted to approve a bylaws change that removes the regions layer of the AIA structure. The region that we currently belong to is the Northwest and Pacific Region and it is the largest region in the country including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Alaska and the Mariana Islands.

The approval of this bylaws change means that our region will go through a process of dissolving and the duties that have been traditionally handled by the region chapter will move to the state chapters, in our case AIA Oregon. The primary tasks include selection of a state representative to the National Strategic Council as well as management of representatives to several National groups such as the Young Architects Forum, the National Associates Committee, the Small Firm Exchange and the College of Fellows.

Our region has assembled a taskforce to tackle the processes that the dissolution requires, and we estimate that the work will be complete and read for final approval by the annual meeting in September 2022. The future of the Regional Design Awards and the NW&P Regional Leadership Summit will also be discussed as part of this process.

If you have any questions about the dissolution of the region, please feel free to reach out to me.

Sincerely,

Heather Wilson
AIAO Executive Vice President