When architecture students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign learned they had won the bid to host the annual national conference of the American Institute of Architecture Students, they knew they wanted to put on a really big show. So they decided to move the venue 140 miles north, to the city of big shoulders and tall buildings: Chicago.
Chicago, the organizers determined, was the ideal backdrop for AIAS FORUM 2002, scheduled to take place Dec. 29-Jan. 2 at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers. The location, in a city rich in architectural history, seemed custom-made for the conference's overall theme, "City Reborn."
"The history of the city of Chicago is an illustrious one," said Zach Borders, a graduate student in the School of Architecture at Illinois and FORUM 2002 chair. "The Chicago that exists today rose out of the ashes of the devastating fire that swept through the city in 1871. Today Chicago is a city of skyscrapers, proud neighborhoods and a population that knows its architecture like no other.
"Not all American cities are healthy today," Borders said. "Many have been crippled by social, economic and design disparity. The mistakes of the past are now affecting the future. As the next generation of community designers, we must understand the responsibility we have in making the world a better place than the one we grew up in."
Among the conference's many goals, he said, is to "bring together the youth of the design professions in order to understand how we can contribute to the design and enhancement of the city without harming it." Ken Crabiel, an Illinois graduate student in architecture and publicity chair for the event, said some of the topics that will be explored include issues central to city planning and architecture such as the New Urbanism movement and sprawl, ecological design, and the future of tall buildings in an era redefined by concerns that such structures could be targets for terrorist attacks.
Crabiel expects FORUM 2002 will attract about 1,500 people, including architecture students, educators and professionals from across the country and abroad. Also attending will be 40 inner-city Chicago high school students who will have the opportunity to attend one day of the conference, thanks to the AIAS Foundation, a philanthropy project created by architecture students at Illinois.
Keynote speakers at the conference will include Donald L. Miller, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated best seller "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America"; California architect Eric Lloyd Wright, who apprenticed with his grandfather, Frank Lloyd Wright; architect and town planner Andres Duany, a founding member of the Congress of New Urbanism; Sharlene Young, recipient of the AIA Chicago Young Architect Award; and Chicago architect and Illinois alumna Carol Ross Barney, recognized for her work on the new Federal Office Campus in Oklahoma City, which replaced the Murrah Federal Building, severely damaged by a bomb blast.
More information on FORUM 2002 is on the Web at http://www.aiasnatl.org/forum.
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