Great Spaces, Great Places
Matthew Kreilich, FAIA, LEED AP, will keynote our 2020 AIA SD convention and serve as the juror for the 2020 AIA SD design awards. Kreilich is a design principal at Snow Kreilich Architects in Minneapolis. Recently the studio received AIA’s 2018 Architecture Firm Award, an honor that recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished …
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As member Architects or members of the general public, it’s understandable to question “what are my dues paying for?” and “what does the AIA do for us, anyway?” There are detailed responses to those questions, of course, but right now it’s easiest to just present some tangible evidence of the value of this organization. In …
Continue reading “The AIA is leading the built-environment response to the pandemic.”
Among the silver linings of the worldwide Coronavirus epidemic and associated shutdowns are the drastic improvements to urban air quality, remarkable examples of community building and random kindness, and the opportunity to consider new possibilities for the spaces in which we live, work and play. Here are just a few quick reads on how some …
Continue reading “Rethinking Architecture in the Pandemic Era”
Discussions about how to battle future pandemics through better buildings are becoming commonplace, and the goal of improved interior environments is one aspect that dovetails with sustainability issues championed by the AIA Committee on the Environment. Architects continue to raise the bar on performance, design and flexibility. This ongoing dedication to improving the built environment …
This is the inaugural post of series in which we ask community leaders about the community they live in and share their answers with you. We hear what their favorite spaces are in the city and why and what issues their city faces from their point of view. Our goal is to get a sense of South Dakota and the cities that make it up. We hope to have a variety of cities and perspectives of the same cities. By engaging community leaders, designers and communities can see the spaces in a city from a different perspective: the people that are making decisions.
In a profession that has multiple answers for every problem, having a means to use analytical data in your design almost seems like a cheat code to success. Film has benefited from the same the concept that this idea rests so firmly on; human curiosity. My interest in how our environment influences our attentiveness turned me towards videography. What if your environment is a screen in front of you? Publishing websites like YouTube and Vimeo both have integrated analytics that break down things like “average user watch time” and “retention rate.” While these terms seem outlandish when put into juxtaposition with the design of our built environment, they are used in the same way serial vision is implemented in architecture. Every videographer’s goal is to create something that holds the viewers’ attention through the ending. Most of us know what it’s like to watch the first 30 seconds of a video only to stop watching because it didn’t interest us.
Architecture can be found in every area of the globe, from your house in Brookings, South Dakota, to the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Traveling can enhance your perspective of a place and become a learning experience… I realized that we can learn from architecture anywhere; whether it be from a building down the street or across the world.
A South Dakota architect in Yankton, Sarah Mannes Homstad is conducting a study during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is in response to the evolving needs of our communities and questions about what it means, architecturally-speaking, to inhabit our world today. Mannes Homstad asked herself the following questions: What is changing about the way we …
Continue reading “Input Needed : SD Architect Collects Data About Architecture & Social Distancing”
While the silver lining in no way relieves the pain and suffering of those directly and indirectly affected by this global pandemic, it does pose some questions of what this means for the 9-5 desk jobs. Will we see another paradigm shift in office designs? Will home buyers evaluate prospective homes based on the office or den? Will South Dakota see a return to rural lifestyles as living in the city is no longer a requirement to stay connected? The future holds many unknowns, but if anything is certain, it is that life will go on. We will pick up the pieces and learn from the events that necessitated a sudden separation.
U.S. Census Bureau defines rural as any population, housing, or territory NOT in an urban area. So by its definition, rural is not a self-defined condition, but it is the absence of the urban. Then it goes forward to define urbanized areas as having a population of 50,000 or more. The green area on the map above (US Census) represents all the area in the US that falls under the classification of rural based on this definition.