How Designers Can Amplify Change – Vectorworks Presents at AIA Conference on Architecture 2021

Carter Hartong, Associate Content Marketing Writer at Vectorworks

This article is adapted from an original blog post written by Vectorworks Associate Content Marketing Writer Carter Hartong.

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The American Institute of Architecture Conference is a greatly anticipated event and is often a highlight of many designers’ years. Each conference provides new opportunities to learn, receive industry updates and network — all in the name of growing as a designer.

Vectorworks is beyond excited to participate in this year’s four-day immersive digital experience, with activities spread throughout the summer. On July 8, Vectorworks Senior Architect Product Specialist Luis M. Ruiz helped designers discover how to sketch, draw and model in a fully integrated BIM workflow using only Vectorworks Architect’s tools. From parametric objects and custom 3D modeling to presentation, rendering and document, Ruiz demonstrated how Vectorworks brings efficiency to workflows and data-rich insights to the full design process.

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On July 29, in theme with the day’s focus on community engagement, Vectorworks is proud to partner with Eastlake Studio to present a session that explores how designers can use the skills they already possess to plan and manage a community-based project.

Design thinking can be applied to everyday activism. As creative problem solvers, designers catalyze change by improving the environments where people live, work, and play. Designers can extend this momentum beyond billable work to volunteer activities that promote social justice. The session, Amplify Change: Designers as Sounding Boards presented by Eastlake Studio Principal Christina Brown and Graphic Designer Camille Hunter, will reveal how designers can leverage resources and apply professional skills in the context of community engagement.

“As designers, we must research and iterate to be successful in our design work. We are learning that activism requires the same amount of thoughtful research to impact the communities we seek to change,” says Brown. “No one cares more about your community than you do, so what better reason to make sure you have a voice in that change?”

Using their own initiative, Sounding Boards, as a case study, Eastlake Studio will lead a discussion that explores how individual designers and firms can amplify change using the tools of their trade.

“A Sounding Board by definition is a physical object that amplifies sound to a larger audience. This public art initiative came about by architects and designers who saw an opportunity to give that platform to those who needed to be heard,” says Brown. “As designers we seek to improve lives through thoughtful design. The artists we commission seek to improve communities by activating conversations with art.”

The session has four main learning objectives:

· Examine your internal assets and external network, merging resources into a valuable tool kit.

· Delineate tasks based on expertise and skill sets, treating the community-based action as a design project with a clear process and objective.

· Evaluate the process to pivot as needed, continuing to ask questions, evolve, improve, and iterate.

· Recognize the broad benefits of action: short term, long term, for the community and for your firm.

Brown hopes that by diving into Sounding Boards as a case study, session attendees can take away valuable lessons and tools to further their own activism within their firms and beyond. “The major takeaway from this session is that each of us has the capacity to apply the skills and resources we already have, following an already-familiar process, to endeavors beyond our typical day-to-day jobs—and that in reality the two are not that separate.”

Learn more about this session here and to register for the AIA Conference on Architecture, visit conferenceonarchitecture.com. Vectorworks will also be available for additional support on the remaining conference days—July 29 and August 19—via our company page presence.

Category: Vectorworks

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