Savannah will become a living laboratory for attendees of the American Institute of Architecture Students Forum 2012.
The AIAS and the Savannah College of Art and Design have partnered to host the forum Dec. 29 through Jan. 1 in the historic district. Savannah’s status as the nation’s first planned city and holder of the largest National Historic Landmark District are just two of the reasons for this honor.
“This is the largest gathering of architecture students nationally,” says Christian Sottile, dean of the SCAD School of Building Arts. “The AIAS was founded in 1956 to support students and help them develop professional discipline leadership within their fellow students, even before graduation. Over the course of almost 60 years now, the AIAS has grown to be the premier architecture association for students.”
Attendees will have access to tours of the city conducted by SCAD faculty. “The tours cover the range of the building arts topics,” says SCAD architecture professor Anthony Cissell, who is chairing the event’s planning committee.
“We have urban design tours and a whole range of architecture tours,” he says. “We’ve got some other tours that focus more on the monumental architecture of Savannah, our civic buildings and tours focused on interior design.”
“Savannah is the perfect setting to do this,” Sottile says. “We’re really pleased to have Savannah on a national stage for this event.
“We enjoy this every day in Savannah,” he says. “Now we are able to open it up to 550 students from around the country and internationally to share Savannah as a living laboratory.”
The SCAD School of Building Arts has six departments. “The architecture department is the center for this conference, but it is closely aligned with other departments that share some of the technical skills, such as historic preservation, or urban design,” Sottile says.
“In my role as dean, I see the connections between the disciplines. Savannah as a place really demonstrates that.”
Savannah is the smallest city thus far to host the forum. “It tends to be held in big cities for logistical reasons,” Cissell says.
“This is really a unique opportunity for it to come to the city of Savannah, which is so different from the bigger cities it is usually held in,” he says. “This was the location chosen by architectural students around the country.
“The way a city is chosen is kind of like the Olympics,” Cissell says. “It was chosen two years out at the forum.
“This year, schools will be bidding to host the forum. Two years ago, a great group from SCAD did a presentation in Toronto to be the host chapter for 2012.”
Architect Antoine Predock will be the forum’s keynote speaker. “He was the 2006 award medalist,” Cissell says.
Predock is the principal architect for Antoine Predock Architect, PC, based in Albuquerque, N.M., with offices in Los Angeles and Taipei, Taiwan. His designs include the Turtle Creek House in Dallas, Texas, and Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres Major League Baseball team.
His current projects include the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and the National Palace Southern Museum in Taipei.
“There is a reciprocal benefit for these renowned practitioners and theorists to share their knowledge with students,” Sottile says. “It’s been exciting for us to see AIAS reinvent their conference around Savannah for a world-class setting for training architects.”
“This is the first time an AIAS forum will really truly be integrated into the community in terms of it being a more dispersed conference,” Cissell says. “In most cities, there is a conference hotel and 95 percent of the forum happens within that conference hotel.
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