Meet our 2023 President!

 

Greetings AIA Birmingham,

I would like to thank our members for the opportunity to serve as your president this year. It is an honor to lead this chapter, especially alongside such a strong and talented Executive Committee. AIA Birmingham has many initiatives aimed at fostering better community involvement with local municipalities and education centers. Over the next year, our goal is to advance those current initiatives and plan more opportunities in our local communities for increased communication and inclusion in our built environment.

Our Executive Committee has frames our plans for the year in keeping with our IAA Birmingham Mission Statement:

“AIA Birmingham’s primary goal is to provide support to our members. We advocate for the value of architecture and give architects the resources the need to do their best work. Our work should drive positive change through the
power of design.”

We want to make living and working in our community better for all. AIA Birmingham has several special initiatives happening already this year. We are currently working with local leadership to help address the attainability issue in housing. Our goal is to work with city planners and Zoning boards to help facilitate new ideas in what attainability means and how we, as Architects, can help communicate these ideas. These are exciting conversations we are having and there are lots of places for our members to plug into these efforts and get involved in making action happen. If you would be interested in helping with this or any other initiatives we are working on, please reach out.

In addition, planning for all our favorite parts of the AIA Birmingham Calendar are still ongoing. Interesting Chapter Meetings and HSWs, a Healthcare Symposium in August, dreamARCHITECTURE (ACFA), Design Awards, the Emerging Professionals groups has fantastic site visits open to all members, new plan for study sessions to help our Emerging Professionals get licensed, and Women in Architecture!

All of this programming is happening to bring value to our architects and to the communities in which we work and play. None of this would be possible without the support of our members, sponsors, and unfailing executive leadership by Karma Management Inc., and Rhea Williams. If you see Rhea be sure to thank her for all that she and her staff do for our Local Chapter. I look forward to being able to serve our members in the upcoming year.

“We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us.” -Winston Churchill

Travis Burke, AIA
AIA Birmingham Chapter President 2023