AIAS UT Knoxville Chapter Hosts Quad Conference, Starts Freedom by Design

September 09, 2010

American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) members Brent Castro, Dani Collins, Katharine Dike, and Lauren McCarty recently attended the 2010 AIAS Grassroots Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C.  In addition to being a great opportunity to meet student leaders from across North America, the conference also offered instruction on how to be an effective leader, how to run a successful AIAS chapter, and tips on motivating and organizing students. 

While there, the students presented plans for the upcoming AIAS South Quad Conference to be hosted in Knoxville this fall. The south quad planning committee created a video presentation to explain and promote the theme of the conference, which is "locus." 

"Our committee has chosen the word 'locus' to serve as the theme of our conference this fall," said Castro, the vice president of AIAS and a senior in the architecture program. "The word is defined as 'a locality of point of reference; a place; a center of great activity or intense concentration; and rhetorically, a point from which one would construct an argument.'"

The UT Knoxville-hosted South Quad Conference will be held Oct. 14-16. Every year, each quad hosts a themed conference during the fall and spring semesters. Hosted and organized by an AIAS chapter in the region, the conferences have become a tremendous way to meet students from neighboring institutions and to learn about architecture outside of the classrooms.

"We are thrilled to have our peers travel to Knoxville in order to experience what has become the core of our teachings of design," Castro said.

The South Quad consist of over 40 schools from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Several activities and programs are lined-up for the conference, including a series of guest lecturers and panel discussions, a design charrette, a Beaux-Arts Ball, a tour of Maya's Lin's work for the Children's Defense Fund at Haley Farms, a trip to Norris Dam, a Firm Crawl and a series of optional tours. For more details about the conference schedule, visit http://www.wix.com/utksouthquad2010/locus.

"Many people in the south region are immensely excited about the happenings of the planned AIAS conference," Castro said. "I expressed to the leaders of the south how the conference committee members and I have poured our hearts and souls into this conference and how our passion for it will show when they arrive in October."

In other news, the AIAS would also like to announce that the UT Knoxville chapter has been given permission to begin its Freedom by Design Chapter. Freedom by Design is an AIAS community service program that utilizes the talents of architecture students to resolve accessibility issues; specifically, they work to increase the mobility of people with special needs in and around their homes. For instance, someone who is wheelchair-bound may not be able to get into their shower or pass through doorways. AIAS chapters work with local community members and organizations to find clients.

The UT Knoxville chapter is actively pursuing a project with a patient from East Tennessee Children's Hospital and is in the process of developing a list of possible clients.

Katharine Dike and Lauren McCarty are the AIAS Freedom by Design co-captains.