Many of you have taken the time and expended the energy to be Citizen Architects. For those of you who have wondered how to take this to another level, the AIA has developed the Citizen Architect Guidebook.
Within its 19 pages, it offers ideas on how to expand your individual influence by training or persuading or encouraging your colleagues to join you in influencing your communities’ futures. I ask that you review this with your colleagues in your firm and your chapter. You espouse important ideas on how your community can work better in the future. If one architect advocating sound transportation, development, planning, and preservation ideas can affect the future, think what several of you could do.
The Society has a file of current Citizen Architects throughout the state by city and county and, in some cases, by town. These lists of boards, councils and commissions identify all members regardless of vocation. In addition, they highlight AIA members and non-members, professional engineers, landscape architects and interior designers. If this list could help you pull together a committee, please call or write Duncan Abernathy AIA (804-237-1776, daber@aiava.org). If you have any questions, please call.
Working together, architects can have a huge influence on shaping their communities’ future.
~ T. Duncan Abernathy, AIA