Thursday, November 5, 2009

Creating an Architecture Forum

St. Louis is a town filled with dichotomies, great buildings, potential and plenty of frustration. We also have opportunity and I have been an eye witness to some of these turned into great successes.

Incremental achievement and advancement accumulates. If one takes heart in this and keeps up the effort the aggregate becomes formidable; it starts to amount to something. We are at this threshold and it is time to come together for the sake of our region and for the sake of the architecture which we love, create and depend on in so many ways.

One way to participate in this is outlined below:


The St. Louis Artists' Guild is divided into 'Sections.' There is one for painting, sculpture, photography, artisans, illustrators and so on. In January 2010 I will present the Guild Board with a proposal for an "Architecture Section.' See statement of intent:

The goal is to create a forum to discuss and exhibit architecture and tangential issues affecting the St. Louis region.

This group would be open to architects, builders, designers, engineers, architectural historians, writers, critics, planners, policy makers and artists who have a passionate interest in the built environment and in our region. I see great value in crossing disciplinary boundaries as a means to advance the level of critical discourse on the built environment.

I am particularly interested in sustainability and preservation and I can easily imagine other topics and areas of interest which would be brought to the table by membership.

What we would get from the Guild:
A meeting space
Occasional section exhibitions/shows
501c3 status
The Guild Director of Finance to keep the books
Interaction with artists, photographers, etc. and ability to enter juried shows from other Sections

What the Guild gets from us:
New members
A different kind of relevance

What I imagine the time commitment to be:
One meeting/month +/- 3 hours
Other work you volunteer to participate in. (Set your own terms)

What we get to create as a team:
Whatever we want
A meeting place for Architecture for Humanity – St. Louis Chapter
Our own by laws under the umbrella of the Guild by laws.

Please comment/contact me if you are interested in being a founding member of this group. I have close to a dozen interested so far and we will need to cap it off soon and get to work on building our foundation.

Labels: , ,