0504 MAY 2014 CONNECTION THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM WWW.AIA.ORG/YAF

EDITOR’S NOTE PROVOCATIONS

Wyatt Frantom AIA

Wyatt is the 2013-2014 Communications Director of the Young Architects National Advisory Committee of the AIA, the Editor-in-Chief of YAF CONNECTION and a Senior Architectural Designer and Associate with Gensler Los Angeles.

REVVING YOUR CHANGE ENGINEUNDER THE HOOD OF A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT

ON AIA GRASSROOTS

I was honored to be among thousands of architect leaders from across the country who had convened to advocate on behalf of their components, firms, communities and the profession at this year’s AIA Grassroots Leadership and Legislative Conference in Washington DC (March 19-21).

As in my past two visits to Grassroots, the conference was as advertised -- an opportunity to have one’s voice heard and, for the many attendees who climbed the steps to Capitol Hill to meet with their congressional and House representatives, to influence the political process on behalf of the profession.

This May issue of CONNECTION includes a debrief of the Grassroots experience by Ian Merker and Ben Kasdan, California’s Young Architect Regional Directors (YARDs) in their joint report Change Through Advocacy. Similarly, Jason Adler and Laura Ondrich share their dual perspectives on the Emerging Professionals Design Competition, the exhibition opening reception of which took place at AIA DC during Grassroots. ■

I recently attended an event hosted by the Westside Urban Forum as a moderated roundtable of local mayors from the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area, including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Culver City. The framework of that panel was structured to discuss changes that each of the municipalities were undergoing in response to the recent impacts of technology. And while the panel touched lightly on certain physical technologies, such as automated mechanized parking and the laying of fiber networks in order to attract business development, I was pleasantly surprised to hear much of the mayoral banter focused on the effect that virtual technologies are now having on their cities.

Centered on the influence of the mobile app, the panelists’ points ranged from the on-demand, personal-vehicle “taxi” services of Uber and Lyft to the real-time gas price monitoring of Gas Buddy to city-sponsored parking space locator apps; leading eventually to on-reservation personal space through AirBnB and the subscription hotdesking and office hoteling of apps like LiquidSpace and WeWork. Regardless of the city, and in each case study cited, it was evident that apps are changing the way that we access our cities. GPS location-enabled and Just-In-Time available as they are, we should go further to recognize that apps, more importantly, are changing how we perceive time and space.

The act of change is always marked by some objective alteration of state through space and over time. The change from day to night, for instance, is marked at its most base observation, by the transition from daylight to lack thereof. We further mark that daily occurrence ourselves by changing from wakefulness to a state of sleep. At the opposite end of that state, with a shower and change of clothes, we wipe clean our slate and start that next day as a new being -- a change from the person who had walked the earth the day before.

These are the minutest, yet the most miraculous measures of change in our all-too-human existence; synchronized by the laws of physics and recorded through our unique and very personal ways of living each of those days.

So what was once measured by merry-go-round revolutions, growth of kool-aid mustaches and the slow tick of the clock is now tabulated in app launches, location check-ins, and number of social media friends and followers. Technological change rates are not only exponential, their spread is viral. As a business model, “the app” as we currently know it barely existed five years ago. Since then, and with over a million available apps, they have totally transformed our lives. In fact, Apple’s App Store adds an average of 25-30,000 apps every month; becoming so universally applicable (no pun necessary) that the phrase, “There’s an app for that”, has become as much a mantra for championing these “assistive” technologies as it has become an inside joke for the displacement of every human action and interaction into a new “virtuality”.

In terms of function, these “application software” are engines which, by definition, have the ability to convert energy into useful action. To dig deeper, the word “engine” derives from the Latin ingenium which is actually the root of the word ingenious. Each app, used independently, is the story of a grassroots movement. The cumulative global action of every single app launch is like a billion-plus micro-muscles flexing – converting that energy into action that leads to ingenuity – a true engine for collective change.

In contemporary parlance, though, apps are a “game changer” – not only in the tech sector, but in our lives. And while the full impact of apps on man’s history is yet to be seen, it is inarguable that they have changed the way we live, how we think of living, and not facetiously, how we value life.

That value could be expressed, tongue-in-cheek, by noting that nearly 20% of all apps developed and 30% of all apps downloaded are for gaming. Admittedly, I don’t know much about Candy Crush, but my Sudoku app gets launched more than it probably should. On the other hand, my twenty-minute morning Metro ride to the office was tailor-made for drafting this very editorial on my Notes app.

So the lesson of apps is in their ultimate application, their utility is in driving the engine forward; much, in the same way that each of us drives the engine of progress forward -- through our action and ingenuity. To see true change, and regardless of technology, we simply need to apply ourselves. ■

To see true change, and regardless of technology, we simply need to apply ourselves.