Letter from the HRC Chair: Spring 2020
Dear Historic Resources Committee Members,
I am delighted to be sending this to you all as the 2020 Chair of the HRC Advisory Group. 2019 Chair Lauren now moves into the emeritus position and leads our Historic Sites Advocacy Team. Thanks, Lauren, for all of your hard work on behalf of the AIA HRC this past year! I look forward to working with 2021 Chair Jill Gotthelf, AIA (NY) who leads the Education and Sustainability Subcommittees and 2022 Chair Sue Ann Pemberton, AIA (TX) who leads the HABS Development Subcommittee. I would also like to formally welcome 2023 Chair Elizabeth Hallas, AIA (CO), who will be taking on developing content for our quarterly newsletter.
2020 got off to a great start with our annual AIA HRC colloquium, held again at Taliesin West. It was a hugely successful and well attended event focusing on the history of building codes for existing buildings and the future impact of new code changes on historic and existing buildings. As usual the weather was as amazing as the setting, and it was a wonderful way to advance our knowledge of working with existing buildings while networking with our peers. Please read the summary of the event in this newsletter written by one of the attending student scholars.
Our Advisory Group is also busily planning events at A’20! We hope to see many of you at the two events that we are sponsoring. The first is our annual luncheon, which will be held on Thursday at the iconic Los Angeles City Hall, co-designed by John Parkinson, who also design LA Union Station and LA Memorial Coliseum. Our invited speaker is writer and TV producer Stephen Gee and the author of author of Iconic Vision: John Parkinson, Architect of Los Angeles.
Our second event is a panel discussion on Friday, co-sponsored by the Richard Morris Hunt Prize. It is entitled Has the Definition of Stewardship for Our Historic Structures Changed? and will be moderated by Thomas Luebke, FAIA, who has served since 2005 as the Secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the federal design review agency for the nation’s capital. It promises to be a lively debate about our collective ability to safeguard our cultural heritage, and we hope very much to engage our audience in the discussion.
We hope you enjoy this newsletter, we have worked hard to pull together what we feel are articles of interest. We have also compiled a list of A’20 sessions and tours pertaining to existing and historic building that we thought would be of interested to our readers.
Sincerely,
Maya Foty, AIA
2020 Chair, Historic Resources Committee Advisory Group