AIAS serves to educate students on the current and prevalent issues within architecture. Every year, students from each region (Midwest, South, West and Northeast) come together for two conferences, one in the spring and one in the fall, to discuss these issues as well as. This year, fifteen LTU-AIAS students attended the Midwest Spring Quad Conference which was hosted by Southern Illinois University located in Carbondale, IL. The theme of this conference was “No Boundaries, No Limits – Exploring the Art in Architecture”. Architecture is one of the many various examples of art. Within architecture itself, students will often time draw inspiration for projects from sources such as sculptures, photography and even digital fabrication.
With visual identity as the focus for this particular conference, students got to participate in workshops directly related to art history and visual communication. Examples of workshops included art in interiors, diagramming, creativity processes, sculpture, origami and a glass blowing demonstration. Also included for the conference were two keynote speakers including Jan Willem van Kuilenburg from Monolab Architects and Jill Downen, who focuses her work on the human body and architecture.
LTU students took in the wonderful opportunity to explore the complexities of art and creativity within architecture. President Moulee Patel described the sculpture workshop as inspirational, citing the intensive way people entwined themselves by writing poems as descriptions for various pieces. Freedom by Design Chair Jake Boyd attended the lecture given by Lee Waldrep, author of “Becoming an Architect”, in which Waldrep explored non-traditional routes students may take with an architecture degree in hand.
LTU AIAS students truly explored the meaning of art in architecture. With workshops, firm crawls and speakers combined, LTU AIAS has come back with inspirational ideas and concepts, ready to get more projects going!
