Our Members have Spoken

Through surveys, forums, and committees, your professional input has poured in about the issues affecting you and your practice; we leverage this input to effect change in local ordinances and in the built environment.

Stuart Sampley provided a summary chart of input related to the Subchapter F (Residential Design Standards) Forum that just concluded.  He will dig deeper on a couple points by emailing a design standards survey.  Formal recommendations will be presented at the September Advocacy committee and the subsequent AIA Austin Board meeting.

Michael Hsu sent word that next week we will move the Subchapter E (Commercial Design Standards) effort from the input process to a recommendation process that can be presented to the Board.  The need for one or more short, targetted work sessions was discussed.  There will also be an update presented at the AIA Austin Summer Conference this month.

Richard Weiss is working on consolidating and comparing local Advocacy Survey results and Forums with the National level efforts.  He will present this information in September with guest Paul Mendelsohn from National at the AIA Austin Green Pastures business lunch.

Jacqui Dodson presented recent updates to the website features, Philip Southwick presented a wrap of recent City Council efforts, and Stuart Sampley briefed the committee on the City's quarterly code changes.  Jana McCann discussed volunteer-created house plans at the Design Voice September 10 Charrette for American Youthworks;  item will be circulated for further discussion prior to next meeting.

We look forward to deepening the dialog with both our professional membership as well as with regulatory agencies and the community.