Citizen Architect Guidebook Available

Posted on by cguske

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

Citizen Architect: Hansen and Loudon Co. Design Cabinet Honored

Posted on by cguske
Al Hansen, AIA accepts the 2010 PlanVirginia Citizen’s Award

Al Hansen, AIA, and the entire Loudon County Design Cabinet were honored with the 2010 PlanVirginia Citizen’s Award.  This award is given to a group or individual who has made a notable and constructive contribution to the harmonious and orderly development of the community, region, state or nation.  PlanVirginia, who sponsors this award, is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering, throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, public understanding and awareness of the need for excellent community planning as a means of making our localities better places in which to live, work, and do business.  

Since 2003, Hansen, who is Director of Architecture for DBI Architects, has served as cabinet chair of Loudoun County’s Design Cabinet.  The Design Cabinet promotes high quality ecological, urban, architectural, and landscape design in Loudoun County. Design Cabinet members include engineers, architects, planners, and designers who have come together in a fusion of creative community problem solving.  Collectively, Hansen and the Design Cabinet members have been actively involved by volunteering in the community, conducting design charettes and problem solving sessions, focusing on improving plans, and stimulating new ways to think about projects in Loudoun County.