Architecture is a manifestation of culture. On the occasion of AIA Baltimore’s 150th anniversary, the AIA Baltimore and Baltimore Architecture Foundation 2021 Lecture Series will explore how the built environment simultaneously reflects and influences culture, in Baltimore and beyond. Each lecture will expose how cultural values shape design. The three lectures are focused around themes with specific local resonance in Baltimore, a city in which the arts and culture are key to community identity, history, and future vitality: Architecture and Identity, Art and Architecture, Architecture and Social Justice. Visiting and local speakers will examine and highlight the built environment and its relationship with the arts, community initiatives, sustainability goals, preservation, equity, the vernacular, and more, as we reflect on how these have been shaped by design practice throughout AIA Baltimore’s 150 year history.

Our first lecture will explore the overall theme and how architecture and the built environment are directly influenced by cultural values. It will examine this through the lens of community-based design initiatives nationally, and projects specific to Baltimore.

Stephen Luoni, Associate AIA, Director of University of Arkansas Community Design Center will address public-interest design and its role in producing public goods, the very definition of what it means to be a profession. Placemaking platforms in housing and food will be discussed through urban design projects underway.

Architects are asked with greater frequency to solve for complex public-interest problems, or “wicked problems” with multi-variate challenges characterized by social complexity. The University of Arkansas Community Design, a teaching office with professional staff, has developed building blocks for a new ecology of the city. A repertoire of eight placemaking platforms triangulates public policy, best practices, and design in agricultural urbanism, missing middle-scale housing, context-sensitive street design, development-oriented transit, watershed urbanism, and low impact development. Our focus on expansive problem-solving through new design tools and pattern languages address the public good in addressing the grand challenges that enlarge the design professions.