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This year’s Public Architects Preconvention Workshop Public Architects: Driving Innovation in the Industry’s Best Practices promises to be an informative, thought provoking workshop focusing on the impact public architects have in influencing the profession’s best practices and the built environment. The collaboration of agency public architects and architects within private sector firms, who manage public sector projects, are at the forefront of urban development, leading social and technical initiatives that drive the industry’s best practices.
Please join us on Wednesday, June 20, 2018 , 8:30 am to 5:30 pm at the Javits Center for a full day seminar as distinguished public architects from the Smithsonian, US Coast Guard, AECOM and Columbia University Facilities discuss innovative case studies containing well-planned strategies for major public projects. They will share successful initiatives that have spurred industry changes, positively affecting both the profession and the built environment.
This year’s AIA theme of the New Urban Agenda with its features of resiliency, sustainability in public buildings, leadership, and solutions to urban challenges of growth are a key thread throughout the five sessions. Development and implementation of standard practice management markers that measure the progress of public architecture toward achieving greater sustainable and resilient goals are evident throughout.
Here’s a glimpse of the program……
Stewardship of Smithsonian Facilities: Unique Conditions/ Extraordinary Measures / Best Practices
Speaker, Debra Nauta-Rodriguez, FAIA, Smithsonian Facilities’ Deputy Director for Planning and Program Management will present the Institution’s capital program initiatives incorporating resilience, sustainability and stewardship in design and construction, urban planning, facility operation practices, and preservation of major museum collections. Featured examples include the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Facilities Master Planning, and others.
Speaker, Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Ph.D. - author of The Metropolitan Airport: JFK International and Modern New York; will provide an interactive lecture/discussion on challenges of growth, sustainability and resiliency as chronicled in his book. The Metropolitan Airport: JFK International and Modern New York addresses the multiple areas of the airport’s significance, its history, key players, impact on NY regional economy, design, the environment, and urban development. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages JFK, for most of its history ignored issues of resiliency and the New Urban Agenda despite significant political pressure to establish better community and environmental policies. Since the nineteen nineties, however, the airport's managers have addressed challenges of growth, sustainability, and resiliency in new buildings as part of a long-term redevelopment/upgrade strategy.
Resilience for First Responders: Explore the crucial role of public and private sector architects before and after natural disasters, leading to building and site restoration, and future planning. Sessions will address lessons learned from recent disasters including Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Paula Loomis, Ph.D., FAIA, US Coast Guard - USCG Shore Infrastructure: Coastal Resiliency and Climate Adaptation – Improving resilience of Federal and community assets.
Steve Loomis, FAIA, AECOM – Planning and Design Considerations for Emergency Operations Centers: Building obstacles in Tornado Alley.
Confluence of Enhanced use of BIM and Adoption of Integrated Project Delivery Type Practice on a Public Project - New York City Police Academy
Speaker, Michael Plottel, FAIA, Columbia University Facilities Director, will discuss select project management challenges of a major public project – New York City Police Academy, and the resolution that led to some interesting proposals for executing future work while also laying bare some of the structural or systemic challenges facing effective public works project delivery.
Learning objectives for WE201 (7.5 LUs/RIBA):
- Gain insight necessary to assess initiatives, strategies, and techniques, helping you establish new processes and create quality programs and projects
- Discover how these leaders implemented better solutions, and explore the benefits gained from improving and establishing new best practices for the public and private sectors
- Identify skills you'll need to accomplish collaborative initiatives and how you can incorporate them into your practice management
- Learn how to apply appropriate and innovative technology and methods to accomplish quality projects and solutions
Our PA community benefits from sharing a newsworthy article – so we hope to hear from you. You can reach me at mwwittmer@gmail.com.
Hope to see you there!
Marilyn Wong-Wittmer, AIA
Chair, A’18 Public Architects Pre-Convention Workshop
Marilyn Wong-Wittmer, AIA is a public architect with 34 years of public service. In 2014, she retired from the Architect of the Capitol as a Jurisdiction Executive in the Office of Planning and Project Management, where she was a management liaison between U.S. Botanic Garden, Capitol Grounds, and U.S. Supreme Court jurisdictions, and her organization, facilitating resolution of program and project issues, short and long range planning, and implementation strategies. She managed legacy projects and programs having agency-wide impact, while providing expertise, direction, stakeholders coordination, and oversight of design and construction. Prior to her AOC experience, she was with the U.S. Postal Service, Facilities Office in Tampa, Memphis, and Arlington, VA for 21 years gaining extensive nation-wide experience managing major construction programs and projects, ranging from renovations to multi hundred million dollar distribution centers and multi facility programs. Marilyn worked in the private sector in engineering and architectural firms for three years prior to beginning federal government service.