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ACSA Conference Keynotes
Each ACSA conference highlights several keynotes that establish the framework or theme. Below, you will find an archive of keynote presentations. ACSA will continue to update this page so that our members may use it as a resource.
ACSA111 Annual Meeting: Opening Keynote & 2023 Topaz Presentation
Keynote: Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA
Presentation: March 30, 2023
Session Description
Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is the recipients of the 2023 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architecture Education. Topaz Medallion Presentation from Sharon Haar, ACSA President & Emily Grandstaff-Rice, AIA President.
An educator, author, and citizen architect with worldwide reach, Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA, has shifted the profession of architecture toward a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive future. Fueled by a passion for representing the unrepresented, she has shaped a career informed by the obstacles constructed by the country’s political landscape. Throughout, she has developed research and tools that encourage the next generation of design professionals to heed the call of activism.
2022 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal
Craig Hodgetts & Hsinming Fung
Presentation: March 18, 2022
Session Description
The 2022 Architectural Education Award winners were recognized in a limited in-person event, which took place in Los Angeles, CA on March 18, 2022. The event was live broadcasted and is now available to watch. At the awards ceremony, all winners were recognized and the 2022 Tau Sigma Delta, Gold Medal was awarded to Hsinming Fung and Craig Hodgetts.
Craig Hodgetts and Hsinming Fung have extensive experience in both academic and professional practice. In 1984, the two joined forces and founded HplusF design lab—an interdisciplinary group of architects, designers and inventors, with skills in urban design, cultural centers, and exhibition design. Their first project together, the Cookie Express, a drive through coffee shop, was awarded a citation from Progressive Architecture. Since that time, their work has been honored by the Chrysler Design Award for a Solar Exhibition in Germany, the American Academy of Letters and Science, numerous project awards from the AIA, and the California Firm of the Year. In 1998 they were awarded the Gold Medal from the Los Angeles Chapter of the AIA.
2022 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion
Deborah L. Berke
Presentation: May 20, 2022
Session Description
For more than 40 years, Deborah Berke, FAIA, has leveraged her nimble harmonization of education and practice to share the discipline of architecture with students and professionals from a wide range of backgrounds. Through her accessible and purposefully non-monumental pedagogy, Berke advances her deep-rooted belief that architectural education should be available to everyone. Her contributions and inexhaustible spirit have inspired countless students and design professionals.
“Deborah has not only played a critical role in welcoming new faces to the school and to the profession, she has also proven herself an intellectual leader, advocating a point of view that has done much to counteract the navel-gazing theories of recent architectural pedagogy,” wrote Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, in a letter supporting Berke’s nomination for the Topaz Medallion. “Her studios and seminars, imbued with what she describes as ‘the architecture of the everyday,’ reflect a fundamental humanity she brings to all her work.”
2021 Administrator’s Conference: Opening Keynote & Discussion Plenary
Keynote: Heather Hackman
Discussion Plenary: Robert Gonzalez, Anne Bordeleau, Malo Hutson, Francisco J. Rodriguez-Suarez, & Sharon Egretta Sutton
Presentation: October 14, 2021
Session Description
Meeting the Moment: The Need for a Racial Equity Lens in Architectural Education
Keynote: Heather Hackman, Hackman Consulting Group
Opening Discussion: Prospects for Change in Architecture Education
Moderator: Robert Gonzalez, University of New Mexico
Presenters: Anne Bordeleau, University of Waterloo
Malo Hutson, University of Virginia
Francisco J. Rodriguez-Suarez, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Sharon Egretta Sutton, Parsons The New School for Design
2021 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal
Johnpaul Jones
Presentation: March 26, 2021
Session Description
Johnpaul Jones is the recipients of the 2021 Tau Sigma Delta (TSD) Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts, Gold Medal.
Johnpaul Jones has a distinguished 52-year career as an architect and founding partner of Jones & Jones. Earning his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Oregon in 1967, his design philosophy emerged from his Choctaw-Cherokee ancestors, which connects his work to the natural world, animal world, spirit world, and human world.
Mr. Jones’ designs have won widespread acclaim for their reverence for the earth, for paying deep respect to regional Indigenous architectural traditions and native landscapes, and for heightening understanding of Indigenous People and their diverse Native cultures of America. Johnpaul has led the design of numerous cultural centers and museums with tribes spanning the North American continent, culminating in his 12-year engagement as overall lead design consultant for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
A Fellow in the American Institute of Architects, his designs have won a stream of local and national awards. His awards include the 2005 Distinguished Service Award from the University of Oregon (his alma mater), the AIA Seattle Medal (2006), the Executive Excellence Award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (2006), the Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Professorship from the University of Oregon (2011), the Island Treasure Award from the Bainbridge Island Art and Humanities Council (2013), the Washington State Governor’s Heritage Award (2014), and the National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2014) conferred by President Barack Obama.
2021 Awards Toast & Topaz Keynote
Kathryn H. Anthony
Presentation: March 25, 2021
Session Description
For more than four decades, ACSA Distinguished Professor Kathryn Anthony, PhD, has been one of the profession’s most prominent guiding forces, long urging architects and the public to embrace the importance of designing spaces for people and designing for diversity. Having influenced a long list of distinguished architects and educators around the world, Anthony is widely recognized for placing diversity, inclusion, and social justice at the forefront of her pedagogy.
“In a time where the Black Lives Matter movement is challenging us to act with agency and thoughtfulness, with respect and responsiveness, her profound work underscores the importance of social justice in all fields, especially ours,” Frances Bronet, president of the Pratt Institute, wrote in support of Anthony’s nomination. “She built on a legacy of architecture to make more vital and engaging public places that reflect the diversity of the American people.”
109th Annual: Opening Keynote
Expanding the View of the Profession
Presentation: March 24, 2021
Session Description
Conveners
Lynne Dearborn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jason Pugh, National Organization of Minority Architects
Tiffany Brown, National Organization of Minority Architects
Kwesi Daniels, Tuskegee University
William Collins, ZGF Architects
What will it take for the architecture profession to catch up to the changing demographics of the United States and Canada? We kick off the 109th ACSA Annual Meeting with a panel of speakers from the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) to discuss their efforts to double the number of Black architects by 2030 and what change in the academy and the profession is happening now and needs to happen urgently.
2020 Administrator’s Conference
Alternative Pedagogies: Indigenous & Pedagogies Presentations
Presentation: November 6, 2020
Session Description
Conveners
Malini Srivastava, University of Minnesota
Theodore Jojola, Indigenous Design + Planning Institute & University of New Mexico
Tamarah Begay, Indigenous Design Studio + Architecture & University of New Mexico
David Fortin, David T. Fortin Architect Inc. & Laurentian University
Chris Cornelius, studio:indigenous & University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Rau Hoskins, TRIBE Architects & UNITEC Institute of Technology
In this panel we hear from five distinguished Indigenous architects who practice as designers, planners, and community organizers while making extensive contributions to scholarship, research and the education of future generations of practitioners. Practice-defining pedagogy that emerged in the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus traditions has persisted for decades. This panel presents contemporaneous alternative Indigenous Practice and Pedagogies, where, from the words of Dr. Jojola, “planning is a culturally responsive and value-based approach to community development; where the measure of form is its cultural meaning rather than building elements as style, function and form; where the process of design is an orchestration of public engagement that gives voice and clarity to built form; where buildings are the narrative of a community and a metaphor for stories that are invested in place and time.”
2020 Administrator’s Conference
Alternative Pedagogies: Indigenous & Pedagogies Discussion
Presentation: November 6, 2020
Session Description
Conveners
Malini Srivastava, University of Minnesota
Theodore Jojola, Indigenous Design + Planning Institute & University of New Mexico
Tamarah Begay, Indigenous Design Studio + Architecture & University of New Mexico
David Fortin, David T. Fortin Architect Inc. & Laurentian University
Chris Cornelius, studio:indigenous & University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Rau Hoskins, TRIBE Architects & UNITEC Institute of Technology
In this panel we hear from five distinguished Indigenous architects who practice as designers, planners, and community organizers while making extensive contributions to scholarship, research and the education of future generations of practitioners. Practice-defining pedagogy that emerged in the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus traditions has persisted for decades. This panel presents contemporaneous alternative Indigenous Practice and Pedagogies, where, from the words of Dr. Jojola, “planning is a culturally responsive and value-based approach to community development; where the measure of form is its cultural meaning rather than building elements as style, function and form; where the process of design is an orchestration of public engagement that gives voice and clarity to built form; where buildings are the narrative of a community and a metaphor for stories that are invested in place and time.”
2020 Administrator’s Conference: Opening Keynote
Margaret O’Mara
Presentation: November 5, 2020
Session Description
Margaret is a historian of modern America who writes and teaches about the history of the technology industry, American politics, and the connections between the two. She is also a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Her most recent book is The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.
More biographical information and links to selected publications can be found on Margaret’s website, margaretomara.com.
Presentation: September 30, 2020
Session Description
A conversation between Catherine Flowers, whose new book titled Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret is scheduled to be released in November, and Lynne Dearborn, president of ACSA.
This conversation will orient people and communities at the center of the climate and carbon conversation and highlight the varied ways people are impacted by climate changes and rising greenhouse gases, from air quality issues, to water pollution and flooding, to political advocacy. Catherine Flowers will tell her personal story of her evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion.
108th Annual: Closing Panel
Merve Bedir, Jason De León, & Ronald Rael
Presentation: June 19, 2020
Session Description
Merve Bedir is an architect based in Rotterdam and Hong Kong. She is the co-founder of design practice Land and Civilization Compositions, and Aformal Academy and experimental pedagogies program focusing on urbanism and beyond. Currently, she is an adjunct assistant professor in Hong Kong University, Faculty of Architecture. Her research engages in the human and nonhuman flows, its infrastructures and technologies in built environment. She received her BArch at Middle East Technical University (2003) and her PhD at Delft University of Technology (2017).
Merve is a founding member of The Kitchen, a transnational women collective based in Gaziantep/ Turkey, and Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul/ Turkey. She curated uncommon river (Plovdiv, Bulgaria), Vocabulary of Hospitality (Istanbul), and co-curated Automated Landscapes (Shenzhen). Her work took part in Venice, Istanbul Design, Shenzhen, and Saõ Paulo Biennales, and Oslo Triennale. She wrote in AD Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, Volume, and Funambulist among others. Merve has taught in Birmingham University, Hong Kong University, Columbia GSAPP, and Delft University of Technology, among others.
Jason De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) inc., a 501(c)(3). The UMP is a long-term anthropological study of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States that uses a combination of ethnographic, visual, archaeological, and forensic approaches to understand this violent social process. He is the author of the award-winning book “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail” (featuring photos by Michael Wells) and Head Curator of the forthcoming global exhibition Hostile Terrain 94 that will be installed in 150 locations between May and October of 2020. De León is President of the Board of Directors for The Colibrí Center for Human Rights and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow.
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello draw, build, 3D print, teach, and write about architecture as a cultural endeavor deeply influenced by craft traditions and contemporary technologies. Wired magazine writes of their innovations, “while others busy themselves trying to prove that it’s possible to 3-D print a house, Rael and San Fratello are occupied with trying to design one people would actually want to live in”. They are founding partners of the Oakland based Make-Tank, Emerging Objects and they speculate about the social agency of architecture, particularly along the borderlands between the USA and Mexico, in their studio RAEL SAN FRATELLO. You can see their drawings, models, and objects in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
2020 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal
Tatiana Bilbao
Presentation: June 18, 2020
Session Description
Tatiana Bilbao was born and grew up in Mexico City. She has built in many other countries than Mexico and works with a global outlook, but Mexico’s cultural, social and political conditions form a natural part of her activities; although often implicit, social commitment is like a built-in reflex – a way of thinking.
The two spheres in Bilbao’s work are linked by simple geometry; a tool that can communicate architectural principles to uneducated construction workers in Mexico. It is geometry that the hand can draw, as opposed to parametric design – design which is created by and large with the aid of the algorithmic thinking of the drawing programs and which most architects work with today. In both process and presentation, Bilbao works with paper collages in an analogue approach to a profession that is otherwise dominated today by virtual renderings.
2018 Administrator’s Conference: Closing Keynote
Anna Herringer
Presentation: October 26, 2018
Session Description
Anna Heringer Keynote @ 2018 ACSA Administrators Conference | Engaging the World.
2018 Administrator’s Conference: Opening Keynote
Anupama Kundoo
Presentation: October 25, 2018
Session Description
Anupama Kundoo’s opening keynote at the Engaging the World | 2018 ACSA Administrators Conference in Quebec, Canada.
Danielle Dent
Director of Membership, Marketing, and Publications
202-785-2324
ddent@acsa-arch.org
