Architects in New Orleans

Under the rather radical emblem of the raised fist holding a pencil molded after revolutionary placards of France in 1968 (La Lutte Continue) Architects from across the country and even some foreign places convened in New Orleans for their annual professional gathering. The topic "Regional Design Revolution Ecology Matters" was as convoluted as the schedule of three days of endless seminars, design salons, workshops, tours and keynote addresses followed by receptions of all kinds. Who found an unscheduled minute could walk through the cavernous exhibit halls and touch whatever the construction and design industry has to offer, doors, windows, facades, solar panels and the latest CADD software. Everything is electronic now: from the I-Phone app for the convention schedule to the LCD signs at each classroom which, ecology be darned, glowed day and night with the AIA logo up and down the endless hallways. The pass acted as a swipe card and each class and event that offered the so called CEUs (Continued Education Credits) started with a long line of architects trying to use one of several swipe machines and receive small printed receipt just like at the self service gas pump. Inevitably, inside the overcrowded classrooms half of the attendees stared at their smartphones, probably browsing e-mail or worse and getting their credits for not paying attention. Of course, they could also have taken their lecture notes on these devices, one never knows.

Keynote addresses came from New York Times writer Thomas Friedman ("Hot, Flat and Crowded") and Jeb Brugman, both non architects. The one contending that new media have made the world flat (instant news across the globe), that climate change is real and that old technology still makes the planet crowded, the other questioning that world is really flat and instead emphasizing that cities and density are the solutions. Both agreed that we deal with "system problems".
For the keynote addresses several thousand architects convened under a huge metal shed-roof in what seemed to be the other half of the expo hall. Double screens showed the distant speaker figure in larger scale and each address was preceded by awards and celebration of those on "whose shoulders" we stand. Japanese architect  Fumihiko Maki received the AIA Gold Medal this year and responded with dignity and modesty. A former AIA President who had fought in World War II was rolled on stage in a wheeelchair to receive standing ovations but was apparently not willing or able to address the crowd.

Looking around one could see finally quite a few women architects, even a few black architects while on the stage white males still pretty much dominated every aspect of the events. The crowd was also diverse in their wardrobe from professional to outright sloppy (shorts, tennis shoes and baseball cap). A good number of architects still sport the famous Corbusier glasses which one could also see on the face of the female Dean of an elite architecture school who showed up on screen to laud the character of the Gold Medal winner. The glasses made her look like an owl, even more so than it made her male counterparts look like one.

Conventioneers leave their digs to explore town in packs, preferably in air conditioned buses but also on foot with the name tags dangling around their necks and the black AIA bags over their shoulders.  This way one could easily follow their penetration into New Orleans which rarely went beyond the string of big hotels strung along the Mississippi from the convention center towards the French Quarter. 

A trip via the free ferry across the mightily swollen river to historic Algiers brought to light no more architects but some locals gathering on the levy, one of them uninvited musing about the history of Algiers, the source of the cedar wood on the old houses ("from abandoned barges") and the events during Katrina when he and his son guarded their house with a gun on their lap sitting on the front porch. His report was laced with the n word for all the bad elements in town including the police who looted homes and hauled the bounty away in school buses. Below the levy and a good 10 feet under the water level Algier seemed a lot more peaceful than this man, people tending their gardens or drinking coffee at the one coffee-shop in town across from the church.


 For me the convention ended with a festive "convocation dinner" in which new and formerly elevated "Fellows" of AIA appeared in tuxes and watched mug shots of the new class flash up on screens each accompanied with the applause that the colleagues from the same town or chapter could could muster. It was the Sheraton but the view was one of an architecturally unadorned parking garage made of precast. A band animated several to dance yet the free pre-dinner alcohol became restricted by a cash bar afterwards and thus curbed too much exuberance since only a few wanted to add further cost to the proud ticket price for this evening. So soon folks began to stroll out into Canal Street and across Sheraton lobby where translucent blue panels were unfailing proof of a recent remake. Hotels are slowly shedding their stuffiness, at least in the lobby. Out on Canal Street a small crowd emerged from the Marriott across the street and followed a marching band wildly swing butts and pompoms, police escorting this little invocation of carnival up the street front and back, blue lights flashing. Yes, New Orleans is still a party town.