Last week, I had the opportunity to attend and present at the annual AIA Austin Design Excellence conference. In today's post, I wanted to share the highlights of this event, including the two sessions Lake|Flato was represented in.
Photo: Me, Sophia Razzaque, AIA, IIDA, NOMA, LEED AP (Lake|Flato & AIA Austin president-elect), and Javier Sanchez, Hon. FAIA (JSa, Keynote speaker)
The event was held at the AT&T Conference Center on the UT Austin campus in Austin, Texas. Lake|Flato has offices in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. I am based out of our San Antonio office, but Austin is just 1.5 hours away (depending on traffic:)).
As usual, with my event recaps, most of the photos that follow are in chronological order.
The day-one keynote kicked off with a talk from the new dean of the School of Architecture at UT Austin, Heather Woofter. She shared a nice overview of her experience (academically and her practice, Axi:Ome) and her plan to support and amplify faculty goals and ambitions.
Presenters:
- Sophia Razzaque, Lake|Flato
- Al York, McKinney York Architects
- Daniel Woodroofe, dwg.
- Justin Rankin, Gensler
- Nkiru Gelles, Low Design Office (moderator)
In the previous photo, Sophia is highlighting a project she worked on called Hotel Magdalena. I had the opportunity to work on the embodied carbon study for this project, which is featured in this white paper! Fun fact... this project uses a DLT structural floor and wall system that does not have any glue, which reduces the GWP a lot compared to CLT.
As luck would have it, I had the opportunity to have dinner at Hotel Magdalena Thursday night with Javier Sanchez (day-2 keynote speaker) and an old friend of his, Jesus E. Gonzalez Rendon (Exhibitor at the conference and owner of Opticretos Architectural Precast) as well as his associate Javier Aragon.
Here are a few photos of the "third space" and dinner!
After dinner, we walked to a nearby music venue to experience some of what Austin is famous for:)
A great session on the last day was Lighting Design for the Aging Eye by Charles K. Thompson, FAIA from Archillume Lighting Design. This was an 8 a.m. session, just before the day-2 keynote!
The day 2 keynote was given by Javier Sanchez. Hon. FAIA from Mexico City, Mexico. Sophia had a tour of his office earlier this year and invited him to present on some of the amazing water conservation work he is doing on his projects, his own office, and even his home. Beyond these examples, JSa has many amazing projects that have been featured in/on: ARCHITECT Magazine, Denzen, Archdaily, Dwell, and more.
The image below shows Javier's office, which used to be an Ice Factory in Mexico City. Another project featured was his Rain Harvest House. Both projects harvest rainwater and treat blackwater to create self-sufficient water for each project. So cool.
A final session I attended before heading home on Friday was on the Austin Green Awards - what it is and how to apply.
I also gave away one of my Revit textbooks to an architecture student!
For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn
Lighting design professionals: check out my Revit & ElumTools training https://bit.ly/3NJjhCV
Here are a few slides from our presentation...
If you live anywhere in the region, I highly recommend you check out this conference next year!
For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn
Lighting design professionals: check out my Revit & ElumTools training https://bit.ly/3NJjhCV