AIA Discover Architecture Day 2021
A BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE:
AIA DISCOVER ARCHITECTURE DAY 2021
HOSTED BY DESIGN DIALOGUES • APRIL 2021
DBB participated in this year’s AIANY Discover Architecture program, a local high school career exploration program that gives students the opportunity at first-hand experience of architecture as a potential career path. In previous years, students would typically spend several days in an architecture office, participating in activities such as going on site visits, attending client and staff meetings, and experimenting with programs and 3D printing. However, given the current impacts of Covid-19, this year’s program was done as a one-day “conference” style digital program, with students attending sessions on four different tracks curated by the Center for Architecture. The topics for each session ranged from lessons on career path, to the business of architecture, to technology. Davis Brody Bond volunteered for three of the sessions, focusing on a virtual job site tour, architecture as a collaborative process, and diversity in the field of architecture. Although the intent was for the presenters to teach the students more about architecture, it was the presenters who learned how astute this next generation of young people are by the variety of intelligent and thoughtful questions that were asked during and after the presentations!
Read more about the specifics of each session below.
Virtual Site Tour: Irish Arts Center
This session sought to introduce students to the construction site with the intent of providing access to spaces and building features that are intrinsic to the Arts Center’s function but are otherwise out of site once the building is occupied. Through the course of construction, the architect documented progress and the tour offered students the opportunity to bridge the architectural concept with a nearly complete building.
The 50-minute session consisted of: a short slide show to introduce the project context and concept; the presentation of construction progress photos superimposed with the current construction site conditions; and a virtual site walk focusing on the Flexible Theater, and its support spaces. Contributions to the theater function by the structural, building systems, acoustics, and theater design disciplines were all investigated.
— Newt Kershner
Architecture as a Collaboration: Collaborating in the Design and Construction of a Building
The goal of this session was to give the students a better understanding of the process of collaborating, the different parties involved in designing and constructing a building, and the tools used during the design and construction phases with focus on less familiar collaboration tools used during construction. The session began with defining the word “collaborate” and provided a few common cultural examples of collaborations within the worlds of fashion, art, and music in order to provide a more familiar framework for the topics that followed. The “iterative process” was then discussed by using examples of how teams work together, produce options, and review as a group as a means to make design decisions and progress a project. The different parties involved in the design and construction of a building was then discussed, using our competition for “Big Ideas Small Lots” as an appropriately scaled project to better define each party and their responsibilities on a project. Scale and type of project was also discussed as important factors in the size and make-up of a team.
The second part of the session focused on the tools that architects use which aid in the collaborative process, specifically BIM programs such as Autodesk Revit and Navisworks. In order to contextualize specifically how these programs are useful, the working relationship between the architect, construction manager, and building trades was introduced and explained.
From there, the Navisworks model of a current Davis Brody Bond project was shown to students and key points were illustrated, such as how the Construction Manager compiles all of the various models of each trade as a means of coordinating amongst them, and how the architect then uses the Navisworks model to then coordinate against the architectural model in Revit. An example scenario and conversation was posed to students to illustrate a real issue in need of resolution, how it was resolved verbally, and then how it was resolved graphically using Navisworks, and Revit.
— Daisy Houang
J. Max Bond and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
As Director of Graphic Design at Davis Brody Bond, I was initially invited by AIA Discover to talk to students about the role of graphics and marketing in architecture (e.g. crafting visual narratives, creating graphic standards, use of graphic software, branding and marketing graphic collateral, signage and environmental graphics etc.) However, in keeping with the theme of diversity that was a central part of the 2021 program, my topic was subsequently changed to “Diversity in the Field of Architecture” — certainly a far more interesting and timely topic than the one I was going to speak about, but one about which I felt much distinctly less qualified to speak,
I tried to split the difference by discussing my (too) brief experience working with Davis Brody Bond Founding Partner with Max Bond Jr. in the pursuit of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture — a crowning career project that Max had been tracking for years, and for which developed the initial programming documents. Following a successful design proposal, Davis Brody Bond collaborated with Phil Freelon and David Adjaye on the firm’s winning entry in the international design competition held in 2008. Tragically, Max passed away before seeing the museum’s completion, but my brief time working with him to win the project left a deep impression on me, as it had on so many of his colleagues, clients, and students before me.
The presentation began with brief biography of Max, whose professors at Harvard had advised him not to waste his time in a profession dominated by white men. Nevertheless, he persisted. He went on to become Chair of the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University, Dean of the City College of New York School of Architecture and Environmental Studies, and City Planning Commissioner for the City of New York. From 1990 to 2008, Max’s vision and wisdom helped guide many our firm’s best known cultural, civic, residential, and academic projects, from the Harlem Children’s Zone, to the Malcolm X Center / Audubon Ballroom Restoration, to the National September 11 Memorial Museum.
The final part of the presentation focused on the NMAAHC itself, from its genesis in 1916 as an effort create a permanent memorial to African Americans’ military contributions in World War I; to Congressman John Lewis’ key role in shepherding it to reality; to the detailed programming documents that set the framework for the project; to the elaborate competition graphics that helped DBB win the contract; to final photos of the radiant building in its finished form, with its bronze corona overlooking the National Mall.
First two of eight boards designed for the competition phase
The event was the de facto kick-off to a series of events honoring the legacy of Max over the summer of 2021, including a Design Dialogues interview with two of his longtime friends and collaborators Charlie Shorter and Peter Cook, AIA; and an event hosted by Docomo focusing on the groundbreaking Mary Holmes College dormitories in West Point, Mississippi, which explored the unique ways in which Max brought the Civil Rights Movement to bear on the field of architecture.
— Dylan Jhirad