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Dear Members of the Committee on Architecture for Education
(CAE):
As the 2008 chair, I would like to take this opportunity, to bring
you up to speed on CAE’s many accomplishments for 2007 and
inform you of our plans for this year:
The 2007 Educational Facilities Design Awards
honored 14 educational and cultural facilities: six receiving
Awards of Excellence, four receiving Awards of Merit, and four
receiving Citations. The over 100 submittals is yet another
indicator of the potential business available, but more importantly
the ability to touch a students learning environment. The Awards
were presented at a general session during the School Building Expo
last March in West Palm Beach, FL as well as at the 2007 AIA
National Convention in San Antonio. You can view the presentation
on-line
and we encourage you to use as examples when discussing design with
colleagues and clients.
In 2007 we held our Annual Spring Meeting in
conjunction with School Building Expo. West Palm Beach, Florida
welcomed us with sunny weather for several days of sessions, the
expo floor and tours of local projects.
By increasing our Allied Connections to our
client’s organizations (SCUP, AASA, NSBA and ASBO) we hope to
provide additional paths for dissemination of information directly
to our clients and increase our client’s awareness of the CAE
and its members. We also strategically worked with competing
knowledge organizations (CEFPI and DesignShare) on common issues so
we will be able to become more effective at implementing change
through more knowledgeable clients. We also provide knowledgeable
Jurors to a variety of Architectural Competitions including AASA
and NSBA conventions, NSBA’s Learning by Design publication,
American School and University’s annual architectural and
interiors issues, and, along with CEFPI, for School Building Week
in Washington, DC.
CAENet, our e-newsletter released two issues in
2007 each containing information crucial to CAE members as well as
some very informative articles on design trends and practical
issues we have to deal with on a daily basis. Click here for the
latest version.
Last, but not least, our 2007 Fall Conference - Redefining
Sustainability: New Directions for Designing Our Future
– held in Seattle was an incredible, sold-out event. Content
was rich with presentations from some of the most notable leaders
in sustainability including, William Rees, William Reed, and Rose
Tocke from the Biomimicry Guild. The event included tours of some
of the best examples of sustainable educational facilities that the
country offers. Please be sure to check out the CAE website towards the end of
the month to find a comprehensive post-conference site that will
include speaker presentations, video clips and tour site
information.
As you can see 2007 was a year full of success and we hope the
value you received as a member of the CAE was just as exciting. I
would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Cheri
Hendricks, Assoc. AIA of Broadview Associates, Ltd. for her past 5
years of service on the CAE Leadership Group. We will miss her
enthusiasm and insights and thank her for her integral role in not
only our accomplishments last year, but in elevating the national
discussion about the design of great learning environments.
As we begin 2008, I welcome our newest member Butch Reifert, AIA of
Mahlum Architects to the CAE Leadership Group. Butch has been an
active participant in the CAE for many years and was the Chair of
the Seattle Conference. The work of his firm is among the best in
the country and we are excited to have him as a part of the CAE
Leadership
It is with tremendous excitement that I can assure you 2008 will
provide CAE members with even better value than last year:
The soon to be released 2008 Design Awards will
continue to showcase the very best of educational design and will
build upon the past examples. Keep paying attention, late spring,
for a series of design trend reports that will be a great tool when
working with your clients.
Join CAE April 1- 3 in Schaumburg, IL for the School
Building Expo. Be the first to see the Design Award
Winners and attend the nation's largest conference and expo on
school and college design. Program content is available on-line.
Our 2008 Fall Conference: Schools in a Flat World; Global
Perspectives on Pedagogy and the Built Environment will be
September 10-13 in Helsinki, Finland. It has been 8 years since our
last international conference (Amsterdam 2000) and in that time the
pace of globalization has surpassed all expectations. We will be
examining the ways that various countries are adapting their
learning environments to this challenge. The preliminarty roster of
speakers includes architects and educators from Finland, The
Netherlands, India, the United Kingdom, and of course the US. We
will be touring innovative schools in Helsinki and surrounding
towns and plan on a pre-conference architectural tour. Please make
your calendars and save the date. Look for conference details as
they become available in the next 2 months on the CAE website.
The CAE Leadership is continuing its mission to provide its
membership with current articles and information on a range of
topics. In order to keep the flow of new information constant we
have decided to forgo CAENet, our traditional quarterly newsletter,
and make a commitment to posting fresh content every month to the
CAE website. We hope that you
will visit often (every 3-4 weeks) or set-up an RSS feed to take
advantage of this information. If you would like to submit an
article or other information please contact us .
I hope you can tell by this email how excited I am to build upon
the past success of the CAE. The Leadership Group can not do this
alone and we encourage everyone to become engaged in some
fashion.
If you have any questions or comments or wish to become more
involved in CAE please email cae@aia.org.
See you in Helsinki!
James LaPosta Jr., AIA - 2008 CAE Chair
JCJ Architecture
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