Announcing 2010 Architecture and the City Festival
Call for Submissions

Architecture and the City provides an opportunity for individuals, design practices, companies and cultural institutions to celebrate San Francisco's unique built environment and their contribution towards it.

The 2010 festival theme “Investigating Urban Metabolisms” takes an in-depth look at hidden and emergent systems that generate form, movement, growth and entropy in the city. Program ideas that explore the way architects or projects thoughtfully impact community and reflect issues of sustainability within San Francisco and Marin counties will be given first preference.

Submissions may explore architectural or urban treasures that reveal the city in new ways and which engage the public imagination. Specifically, we seek ideas for exhibitions, lectures, behind-the-scenes tours, walking tours, hands-on workshops, venue ideas, and more. Submissions are due April 2, 2010.

The official festival takes place September 1-30, 2010. Visit www.aiasf.org/archandcity for more information.

SAVE THE DATE!
Marin Living: Home Tours
May 15, 2010

AIA San Francisco’s popular Home Tours program expands to Marin, where a select number of private, modern residences will be open to the public for one day only. The tour program, which has taken place for the last seven years every September in San Francisco, is the first of its kind in the Bay Area to promote a wide variety of architectural styles, neighborhoods, and residences all from the architect's point of view. Projects are showcased with the designer(s) via an open house format, and tour participants have the opportunity to see some of Marin's latest residential projects from the inside out, meet design teams, explore housing trends, and discover design solutions that inspire unique Bay Area living.

Visit www.aiasf.org/hometours for more information.

Architecture and the City Monthly Programs

The popular Architecture and the City festival is expanding its programming and now takes place every month! The new monthly programming series showcases the best of the annual festival celebrating architectural tours, films, exhibitions, lectures and more.

We are very happy to report that our monthly Architecture and the City series has drawn sold out crowds to the different events we've hosted including The Survival and Significance of the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Studio/Residences, the opening of the Vertical Gardens Exhibition (on view through April 30th) as well as the behind the scenes tour of the Crissy Field Center. In case you missed it, check out some of the recent press hits in our newsroom! And be sure to sign up early for our upcoming events.

March Events

See our calendar for detailed information on our March events, or call 415.362.7397. All events take place at AIA San Francisco, 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, and are free, unless otherwise noted.

Career Strategy Roundtable: Tips & Tricks for Portfolio Design
March 8, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

Building Code Consultants: Tony Sanchez (ARS) and Matt Donahue (Rolf Jensen)
March 9, 12:00 pm

Creating a Sustainable San Francisco and Innovative Water Strategies at the Transbay Terminal Project (2 HSWs)
March 9, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Revit Users Group: Curtain Wall Forum- Back by Popular Demand
March 10, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm

Understanding the Research + Development Tax Credit for Architecture Firms
March 11, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

In Search of an Unknown Garden with Ron Herman
March 11, 6:30 pm

The Science of Building Green: Materials, Energy, and Health (1.5 HSWs)
March 16, 7:00 - 9:00 pm

Title 24 2008 New Energy Code Requirements for Residential Designs
March 18, 9:30 - 10:30 am

Open for Business: Finding opportunities in an evolving economy (1.0 LU)
March 18, 12:00 - 2:00 pm

Career Strategy Roundtable: Informal peer-to-peer discussion
March 22, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

New and old: Architectural fusion in the densifying city
March 23, 6:00 pm

ARE: Construction Documents & Services Graphic Vignette
March 23, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Arch + City Monthly Series Film: San Francisco as Seen Through the Construction of Golden Gate Park: Two Film Documentaries
March 24, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

ARE: Construction Documents & Services
March 27, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Academy of Art, 601 Brannon Street, Room 201, San Francisco

Arch + City Monthly Series: Behind the Scenes Tour with the Exhibition Designers of the Global Lives Project + Tea with RonJon Tershay
March 27, 1:30 - 2:00 pm
YBCA Galleries & Forum Building, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco

Vertical Gardens
On View February 18 - April 30, 2010

The past decade has seen an overwhelming emergence of green roofs and vertical gardens, designed to combat the lack of flora in the city. Buildings around the world—from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco—have embraced green walls or roofs for their economical, environmental, and aesthetic values. Vertical farms and gardens are also being envisioned as new ways to feed local and organic foods to city dwellers. Largely based on the principles of hydro-ponics, vertical gardens are mostly self-sustaining because they capture large amounts of natural sunlight and water, and use wind as an energy source. In a country where cities are suffocated by high rises, cement and industrial materials, where can green space exist? As this exhibition demonstrates, one possible answer is “up.”

Vertical Gardens features over two dozen projects, both imaginary and real by an international array of artists and architectural practitioners, including local studios Rael San Fratello Architects, Min Day, Boor Bridges Architecture, GLS Landscape | Architecture, environmental designer Lisa Lee Benjamin, and local nursery Flora Grubb Gardens. Additional pieces by Abruzzo Bodziak Architects; ATOPIA with The Harrison Studio; Bob Bingham and Claire Hoch; Patrick Blanc; Bohn & Viljoen Architects; Dickson Despommier, Eric Ellingsen, SOA Architects, Blake Kurasek; Evo Design with Mica Gross and Rogers Design Group; Todd Haiman; Haus-Rucker-Inc.; Edmundo Ortega and Dianne Rohrer (Co-Founders, Mundo Verde Ortega); Claude Boullevraye de Passillé; Oda Projesi;; Naomi Reis; Roomservices (Evren Uzer and Otto Von Busch); and SITE (Denise MC Lee, Sara Stracey and James Wines). Extensive photographic documentation of existing buildings containing vertical farms, gardens or green roofs by Hundertwasser; Renzo Piano with Chong Partners and Stantec; Emilio Ambasz & Associates; Humpert Wolnitzek; Chad Oppenheim Architecture and Design; Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, Downs/Archambault & Partners, LMN Architects; Scandinavian Green Roof Institute; Conservation Design Forum of Chicago and Atelier Dreieitl of Germany; Enrique Browne and Borja Huidobro with Ricardo Judson and Rodrigo Iturriaga; and others.

Check out the latest reviews from the media:

Vertical Gardens Exhibit Takes Root Downtown (7x7)

Here's the Plan (Daily Candy)

Green walls are the new green roof. (Curbed SF)

AIA San Francisco Hosts Vertical Gardens Exhibition (Contract Magazine)

AIA San Francisco Chapter Hosts Vertical Gardens Exhibition (California Construction)

"Vertical Gardens": Up a Wall (SF Weekly)

AIA San Francisco’s Vertical Gardens Exhibition (The Dirt)

• Co-chair and committee memebers sought for San Francisco's first CANstruction event!
  CANstruction is an event where teams of architects, engineers, contractors, designers and students compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food. It takes 8-12 weeks and thousands of cans of food to create a structure. The results are displayed to the public as an exhibit of fabulous sculptures. Those who attend are invited to donate cans of food at the time of the exhibition. When the exhibition closes down, all canned food used for the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to emergency feeding programs that include food pantries, soup kitchens, senior assistance and day care centers. Since its inception, more than ten million pounds of food have been donated to aid in the fight against hunger. If you are interested in organizing, sponsoring or participating in the event please contact Lauren Sherman at Lauren.Sherman@fulcrumse.com.

• Donate Your Flat Files
  Do you have flat file drawers that you are no longer using? Consider donating them to the Environmental Design Archives! They are a fully self-supporting, not-for-profit institution, so any files you donate will be both tax deductible and greatly appreciated. Please contact Miranda Hambro at (510) 642-5124 to arrange for delivery. They can accept files of any height, length and depth, as long as the drawers themselves are less than 3 inches deep.

• Houses We Love Competition
  Dwell wants to see the houses YOU love. You admire their selections in the magazine, and now is your chance to add your own choice to the mix. The editors will review all the entries, and will select a top tier of twenty finalists. This is where you and your friends come in—once the top twenty finalists are posted online, they'll open the floodgates and invite a frenzy of online voting. They will make the final call, but the submissions that receive the most votes will have the greatest chance of appearing in the 10th anniversary issue of Dwell—October 2010.

For information on competitions/RFPs visit our website at www.aiasf.org/Job_Resources/CompetitionsRFPs.htm.

• William J. Worthen, AIA, LEED AP, joins AIA staff as Director, Resource Architect for Sustainability. He will serve as a staff subject matter expert on sustainability to identify, guide, and facilitate smooth access to information, knowledge, and practice tools for architects.

• POLLACK architecture is pleased to announce the recent promotion of Nathaniel Haynes, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP and Jennifer MacDonald, Assoc. IIDA to Associate level, and the hire of Carmen Bushong, LEED AP.

• HOK is pleased to announce that Marc H. Flax has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Director of HOK San Francisco’s Corporate/Commercial Business Unit.

• Record Residential: A Home for Art by Ogrydziak/Prillinger featured in Architectural Record's video library.

Want to be IN THE NEWS? Email here for consideration.

Most would agree that being detail-oriented is an important trait of a good architect. As a result of this trait, good architects rarely make critical mistakes. Unfortunately, most architecture firms are missing a crucial detail, one that is costing them tens of thousands of dollars every year in additional taxes. That crucial detail is the Credit for Increasing Research Activities commonly known as the Research and Development (“R&D”) tax credit. However, it is not too late to take advantage of the significant tax savings the credit offers.

The federal and California R&D credit is designed to provide businesses with an incentive to innovate and develop new ways of doing things. California’s R&D credit is one of the most lucrative credits in the United States, with some businesses able to entirely eliminate their state income tax liability. The combined state and federal benefits available to a business and its owners regularly exceed six-figure dollar amounts.

When we hear the term “research and development,” we often think of test tubes and beakers, and assume that an architecture firm wouldn’t qualify for the credit. However, the Internal Revenue Services’ definition of R&D activities is much broader than our common use of the term, but it hasn’t always been this way. The R&D tax credit is not new (it has been around for nearly 30 years) but until 2003 many architecture firms would not have qualified to claim the credit. Originally, the tax code required a business to meet the “discovery test,” which meant they were developing something that advanced the body of knowledge in their field. Essentially, it required the company to develop something that was “patentable.” In 2003, the “discovery test” was eliminated making the credit available to a much wider array of businesses. Currently, qualifying research activity must meet a four-part test to be eligible for the R&D credit as follows:

1- Business component development or improvement
2- Elimination of uncertainty
3- Process of experimentation
4- Technological in nature

To help understand how this credit applies to architecture firms, let’s walk through the four-part test step by step.

To read full article CLICK HERE.

Chad Lowe, a CPA, is a tax credits and incentives manager in the Sacramento office for Brown, Fink, Boyce, & Astle LLP, a regional CPA firm. He will be providing a short presentation Thursday, March 11 at AIA San Francisco on the credit, how it applies to the architecture industry and answering any questions you may have. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

Mandatory Continuing Education on Disabled Access Requirements

Specifically, how many CE hours is required?
To renew a license in 2011 and beyond, all California architects must take 5 hours of CE.

Fulfill these requirements with online courses available through AIA California Council. Click here for more information.

NEW MEMBER BENEFITS

AIA Trust
Schinnerer is now offering a 5 percent premium credit to AIA members on their professional liability insurance policies. If your members firm has billings of $5 million or less, acceptable loss ratios and at least 50% of the firm’s professional staff are AIA members, they can reap significant savings. For example…a 30-person firm in New Jersey can save $5,088, a 13-person firm in Virginia can save $1,155, a sole proprietor in Illinois can save $300, and a 20-person firm in Arizona can save $3,070 – all on their professional liability CNA insurance premium by earning the 5% AIA Membership credit at their policy renewal. Call George Boldarini at 301-951-5401 or e-mail George.Boldarini@Schinnerer.com and ask for further details or visit the AIA Trust website at www.theaiatrust.com.

AIA San Francisco welcomes the following new members:
Zephyr Albright | Michael Anglisano | James Blomquist | Clemence Clemence | Thomas Faulders | Lisa Gallego | Lillian Good | Karl Joerger | Joseph O'Neill | Mark Rowlands | Bassel Samaha | Bradley Skipton | Kim Sykes | Tuong Vi Tran | joel villalon | Wolfgang Wagener | Karolina Walichiewicz | Victor Warren

Architects: Build On Your Career

Build on your foundation in architecture with courses from UC Berkeley Extension. Meet the growing demands of clients by integrating sustainability into your area of expertise. Learn from instructors who are leading the industry. With flexible evening and weekend hours, courses and programs are designed for working professionals. Click for more information and to enroll.

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Interested in placing a classified? Reach thousands of readers and get your message out. Call 415.362.7397 or email sponsorship@aiasf.org to find out more.

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