Does DESIGN matter????

Friday- April 23rd  8:00pm : PKN Volume 7 @ Convivium33 Gallery – Church gone Art Gallery, space not to be missed!

As a part of AIA Cleveland’s Architecture Week 2010, PechaKucha Night Cleveland will be held at Convivium33 Gallery in downtown Cleveland. The Gallery is surrounded by one way streets, so please review the parking suggestions at the bottom of this email and the attached map on the postcard.

Convivium33 Gallery – Josaphat Arts Hall

1433 East 33rd Street (one way/off Superior Avenue)

Cleveland, Ohio 44114

Please help spread the word by passing along this invitation to anyone you think would enjoy!:)

Schedule for the evening:

Introduction/Presentations Begin: 8:00pm

Beverage Break: 9:10pm

Presentations Resume: 9:40pm

Presentations End: 10:30pm(ish)

The event is FREE and open to the public. Cash Bar.

The list of presenters can be found on our webpage – www.pecha-kucha.org/night/cleveland/7.

See you on the 23rd, if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact us at pkncleveland [at] gmail [dot] com">pkncleveland [at] gmail [dot] com.

Cheers,

PechaKucha Night Cleveland

Looking for something to do before PechaKucha? Join AIA Cleveland, IIDA, and the Ohio Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects at the April 2010 Happy Hour from 5:30-7:30pm at VERVE – 1332 Carnegie Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. All Members, non-members, students, and design professionals alike are invited to attend.

I was able to catch the CityMusic concert at St. Ignatius of Antioch on Cleveland's near west side.  St. Ignatius of Antioch is the beacon minaret you see lit up at night, as you fly by on I-90.  The church is located at the crossroads of old coach trails--Denison and Lorain--where the beautiful, residential West Boulevard intersects.

Here are some photos from last night. 

They don't do justice to the interior of this beautiful architecture.   It was wonderful to see hundreds of people at St. Ignatius to hear the concert and, afterwards, to see a Middle-Eastern wedding party spill out from the social hall next door.  The Church has many Islamic design elements and was one of the first Catholic parishes in Cleveland designed to appeal to a wider ethnic community.

If you have a chance this week--please attend the presentation on the adaptive reuse of ecclesiastic structures in NEO.  NEO needs more visionary leaders like Alenka Banco and Eugenie Strauss. CityMusic and Convivium33 give us all a chance to appreciate the wonder of our architectural heritage.  The acoustics of this church provided a once-in-a-life-time, celestial experience of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F Op. 93.  It is a memory I will treasure forever.

Please revel in the senses.  See, hear, smell, touch and taste NEO.  We are truly the best location in the nation.  If we only understood it.

Today from 2:30-5:00 Moderator Wilma Salisbury will lead an AIA panel discussion  AIA Panel Discussion -Cleveland NOW (faster)! at Convivium33--scheduled speakers include Piet VanDijk, Marc Manack, Charles Belson, Albert Albano, and Giancarlo Calicchia. Reception to follow.

Over 200 participants showed up last night to participate in the PechaKucha event. 

(Kudos to the organizers who continue to see the bright side of NEO:)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today's discussion brought out some of the problems we face, the opportunities missed and a discussion of how to make change happen now. 

All pretty much agreed that our local political leadership is the primary problem--this AIA week, a first, promises to make architects more accountable for our local future.   The time to make change is NOW.

http://www.clevelandrestoration.org/documents/StIgnatiusHistory.pdf

At the AIA panel discussion held this past Saturday--Albert Albano who heads up the Intermuseum Conservation Association based here in NEO--mentioned that as a child he grew up in the construction industry and only later he realized, as his father pointed out to him, that the family company did not build "architecture"--they built warehouses and "boxes." 

Perhaps, the solution to our crisis in NEO--would be to not pay dues to a union or professional association, but to form traditional guilds, again? 

How do we reintroduce art into our local architecture and preserve the regional legacy of the anonymous craftsmen who built our ecclesiastic, congregational, industrial, commercial, and residential architecture?

(I am at home when I post here...)

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/cleveland/newsletters/1948

From email:

February 3, 2011

I just finished a conference call with The White House announcing President Obama's Plan for Better Buildings: a plan to create tax credits for commercial building energy reductions similar to that called for by Architecture 2030 in the "CRE Solution".

This is a dramatic step toward addressing the commercial real estate (CRE) crisis.

The White House plan calls for the current commercial buildings efficiency tax deduction of $1.80 per square foot, known as 179 D, to be changed to a tax credit (this is roughly equal to the $3 to $4.50 per square foot deduction called for by Architecture 2030).

Since,

    * 90% of all commercial buildings are small (under 25,000sf), most are single establishment occupied (81%) and many are owner-occupied;
    * $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate (CRE) loans are coming due over the next few years;
    * fifty percent (50%) of these loans are underwater, CRE property values are down 40% and a large percentage of building owners cannot refinance; and
    * since many small community banks, which hold most of these loans are failing,

it is important that a commercial tax credit be made transferable, meaning a building owner can sell or transfer the credit in order to make the efficiency renovation.

Many of you, including architects attending AIA Grassroots this week in Washington, DC, have contacted us seeking information about the CRE Solution. This new development provides an important opportunity for you to educate your Congressional representatives about the President's plan.

For information on the CRE crisis, see http://architecture2030.org/the_problem/problem_economy and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-wysham/averting-the-next-mortgag_b_699622.html.

Edward Mazria
Founder / CEO
Architecture 2030
607 Cerrillos Road
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505.988.5309

 
It's a word of mouth thing...but there are signs of intelligent life!

http://www.iidaohky.org/city-centers/cleveland-akron/cleveland-akron-joint-association-floating-happy-hour/104