WMAIA Annual Meeting
December 12, 2023 @ 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
WMAIA ANNUAL MEETING & GREEN GIANTS PRESENTATION 2023
Featuring: Scholarships, Chapter Elections & a Special Green Giant Presentation in celebration of Laura Fitch AIA
Tuesday December 12th | 5:30 – 8:00 PM| in person at 170 Design Building UMass|1HSW (for 4:30 tour, approval pending)
BONUS – arrive early and tour the Bromery Center for the Arts Bridge Renovation 4:30 – 5:30 PM (1 HSW approval pending)
Annual Meeting Sponsored by: Pella
Green Giants Sponsored by: Keiter
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Our December program is a celebration of the season and of design in Western Massachusetts. It’s a time to catch up with colleagues and the chapter.
The main program will begin at 5:30 PM in the Olver Design Building at UMass/Amherst with a reception (with cash bar). We will be presenting WMAIA/AIA National/Pella student scholarships. The December meeting is also our chapter’s annual meeting and election of officers.
The highlight of the evening will be a special Green Giants presentation recognizing Laura Fitch AIA, a beloved colleague who passed away unexpectedly in early 2023. Laura was a founder of the Green Giants program. Since 2013, the Green Giants Award Program (sponsored by the WMAIA COTE) has been honoring the work of trades people, educators, and owners/program directors who help build, teach about, envision and fund the green buildings in Hampshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Berkshire counties.
BONUS — arrive early (4:30 PM) and tour the Bromery Center for the Arts Bridge Renovation (1 HSW, approval pending).
Completed in 1975, Kevin Roche’s landmark project is an uncompromisingly modernist, monolithic concrete facility, consisting of several distinctly different units that in combination form a powerful architectural sculpture. The complex is home to the Music, Theater, Dance and Arts departments as well as a Museum of Contemporary Arts and the 2,000 seat concert hall of the Fine Arts Center. The 26,000 gsf Art Bridge – a 600-foot long and 40-foot wide bar of classrooms suspended 30 feet in the air – was redesigned by DesignLab to accommodate a wide range of fine arts uses, from traditional drawings studios, to a theater rehearsal space, to a state-of-the-art cross-disciplinary recording studio.
The tour of the new facility will show the reorganization of interior space and explore strategies for adaptation to modern uses, improved lighting, wayfinding, collaboration and social spaces, and outline upgrades to the roof and HVAC systems. The project was completed in 2021.
For more information and to register click here
