CA3: Letter from the ED

The work of architects is perhaps the most fully community-engaged of all of the design professions, touching people’s lives in a myriad of ways – from the purely artistic to the mundanely practical. This issue of The Citizen Architect is about the ways that the members of AIA interact with their communities in a direct and personal way.

AIA Georgia is first and foremost charged with protecting and defending the practice of architecture, and ensuring our members have the best possible environment for the profession. This issue has appropriately placed a leadoff article on AIA’s Day at the Capitol (p.9), and the 360 degree impact that participation in this event had with young members from AIA Savannah. But you can also read about the engagement of our members with specific communities in Georgia, and the ways that the architecture profession has engaged in non-traditional ways, as with Gloria Wood’s article on the Cascade Heights neighborhood in Atlanta (p.1 13), and Ralph Raymond’s profile of how the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) is widely engaged in a host of community projects. I particularly like the article about how a small chapter like Savannah has been able to leverage new technology to create a mobile app to help visitor and residents explore that city’s vast architectural heritage (p.40).

This issue seeks to reconnect the work of our members with our communities – one the most fundamental building blocks of the profession.  Indeed architecture often plays the role of knitting our communities together through the fabric of great design.  But we also remember that new design can play important roles as well with winners of AIA Georgia’s Design Awards and Honor Awards.

We have found a lot to recharge our batteries and get excited about in the work of AIA members in this issue, and we hope you will too.


David Southerland
Executive Director
AIA Georgia and AIA Atlanta