AIA LOUISIANA

APRIL 2014

Hotel Reservations must be made by 8/07/14

Cool Spaces! Premieres on PBS in April

A new AIA-backed television program shows the public what architecture is all about

Cool Spaces! 30-Second Promo

If you've ever turned on the TV and wondered why the gap between home "designer" and "architect" seems entirely misunderstood and mostly impenetrable, there's a new show on PBS beginning next month for you that puts the architect front and center.

Cool Spaces!, hosted by Stephen Chung, AIA, will explore how architects and their clients use innovative technology and practiced design traditions to shape the world around us. Equally interested in the design process and the design product, the program will demystify the work that architects do for a general audience, helping to build awareness of how an architect's hand can improve and refine nearly every aspect of the built environment.

Transformative Architecture is Theme of AIA LA Event

More than 200 architects across Louisiana gathered at the Manship Theatre in the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge on March 21 for the Celebrate Architecture program on transformative architecture. The educational event is sponsored by the American Institute of Architects Louisiana chapter (AIA LA). It features nationally-renowned architects providing presentations projects that impacted cultural and environmental conditions in communities. Shown at the event are, from left, Mike Nichols, Associate AIA, and Doug Ashe, FAIA, of Ashe-Broussard-Weinzettle Architects in Alexandria, coordinators of the program;Jeffrey K. Smith, AIA, of Holly and Smith Architects in Hammond and New Orleans; presenters Miguel Rivera, FAIA, of Miró Rivera Architects in Austin, Texas; Anne Marie Decker, AIA, of Duvall Decker Architects in Jackson, Mississippi;Juan Miró, FAIA of Miró Rivera Architects in Austin; and Steve Dumez, FAIA, of Eskew+Dumez+Ripple in New Orleans, LA; AIA LA President William A. Tudor, AIA, of Alliance Design Group in Alexandria; and AIA Central Louisiana Chapter President Shelly R. Strange, AIA, of Ashe-Broussard-Weinzettle Architects.

Cardboard Standout: Shigeru Ban Named the Winner of the 2014 Pritzker Prize

2007 AIA Louisiana Design Conference Speaker

The $100,000 Pritzker Architecture Prize may not come with the largest purse-that honor currently goes to the 15 million yen ($146,730) Praemium Imperiale award for the arts-but it is the most prestigious of architecture awards and the one most likely to propel honorees into the ranks of the most sought-after for future work. For the nearly 40 recipients of the award (funded by the Hyatt Foundation) since it was first bestowed in 1979, the phrase "Pritzker-prize winner" is forever conjoined to their names as the ultimate recognition of talent.

The Pritzker jury announced that the winner of the 2014 award is Shigeru Ban, a 56-year-old Japanese architect known for building refugee shelters at almost every cataclysmic natural disaster for the past 20 years. The jury's citation remarks on how the architect's "sense of responsibility and positive action to create architecture of quality to serve society's needs, combined with his original approach to these humanitarian challenges, make this year's winner an exemplary professional."