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Reflecting on the 2014 AIA AAJ Conference.

By Heather M. Ligler posted 11-21-2014 04:27 PM

  

It has been two weeks since the AAJ Architecture for Social Justice Conference in St. Louis and I want to express my appreciation to the leadership of the AIA AAJ for sponsoring scholarships to attend. The commitment to provide these scholarships means a lot to young professionals interested in participating and I am grateful to be a recipient of one of the scholarships this year. I applied to be a 2014 Scholar because the conference provided a forum to connect our research on courthouses in the Shape Computation Lab at Georgia Tech with a broader audience of other architects and stakeholders interested in the building type and the challenges of justice architecture. It also offered a full spectrum of lessons from others in the field presenting their own inspirations, practice, and work. This turned out to be a wonderful testing ground for our ideas inspiring several new conversations, making friends, and giving us momentum to take the next steps in our research. 



This Spring we will continue the research in the lab, through our collaboration with the GSA on CourtsWeb, and in a design studio focusing on the sectional potential of the courthouse. This will be the fourth studio of this type at Georgia Tech that Dr. Thanos Economou has taught and we look forward to this opportunity to work with students to propose design concepts and solutions that explore the future of the building type. The presentations we saw at this years conference as well as the enthusiastic feedback on our own session will definitely inform this next investigation which we hope to share with the AIA AAJ community in 2015!

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