Thank you to all who attended Design in Action 2011, our joint meeting of the Association of Architecture Organizations/Architecture + Design Education Network and the Association for Community Design. Special kudos to our local hosts and our event volunteers, without whom we would not have accomplished nearly as many good things as we did at this year’s conference. And a hearty acknowledge our members, sponsors, and boards of directors whose support and encouragement made this event possible in the first place.
We’re proud to report that we welcomed 223 delegates to this year’s meeting in Philadelphia. People came to Design in Action from 30 U.S. States and from as far away as Seoul, Korea to take advantage of this rare networking opportunity within our industry. At the public lecture featuring Teddy Cruz, our ranks swelled to more than 300.
Taken together, design education, community design, and public programming represent a solid cross-section of today’s most important design advocates. It was exciting to see so many different groups of thinkers and doers in the same place this year at Design in Action, even if at times it made for a rather crowded event schedule. And for our two Associations, it offered incredibly fertile grounds for testing which areas might deserve continued partnership and group thought. We’re all much the better for having extended the reach of our own networks.
We learned so many wonderful things at Design in Action 2011, from lessons on talking architecture to lessons on listening, on topics ranging from pop up urbanism to rural collaboration, and inquiries into emerging methods and necessary failures. A review here would be exhausting, so instead we’ve posted links to all presentations we received permission to share, and we’ve included a post-event survey giving you the chance to help shape where we take the dialogue.