ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture

AIA Los Angeles is pleased to announce our third annual ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture conference, which will be on Wednesday, April 24 (8am – 3pm) at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, CA.

Our focus for this year will be on business & cultural inclusion, procurement reform and best-practices w/ team-building to achieve greater equity and diversity in the delivery of professional services. The first half of the conference will focus on exploring procurement opportunities with the public sector, including City of LA, LAUSD, METRO and the County of Los Angeles.

WHAT:

This year, our third annual ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture conference will serve as a forum to highlight best-practices to achieve greater business & cultural inclusion, key procurement reform recommendations and successful examples of team-building and mentor/ protege programs and initiatives that will ensure greater equity and diversity in the delivery of professional services in the A/E/C industry.

The first half of the conference will focus on exploring procurement opportunities with the public sector, including City of LA, LAUSD, METRO and the County of Los Angeles. We’ll explore ideas about how to best remove the barrier to entry to gain access to these important contracts, as well as, analyze ways to reduce the risk and burden small businesses must endure once they have a public sector contract.

The second half of the day will focus on private sector procurement opportunities. We’ll highlight mentor/ protege best-practices and expand insight into team-building opportunities to advance more inclusive partnerships.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

Architects, Designers, Landscape Architects, Urban Planners, Engineers, Emerging Professionals, Students, Builders, Contractors, Developers, Civic Leaders and Public Officials.

For more background about this conference scroll to the end of this page.

View the 2018 EDI Best Practices Guide

ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture will also highlight the value-add that inclusive architecture brings to society and how we all gain from a multifaceted profession. Throughout the day, speakers and audience members will describe experiences; contribute best practices; demonstrate the multiple return on investment diversity delivers to our world; and establish strategies to realize a more inclusive future for us all.

WHY:

In early 2017, after 14 months of outreach, the AIA’s Equity in Architecture Commission released “The Equity in Architecture Commission Report”, which details eleven proactive steps to strengthen AIA’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. AIA|LA coordinated the first ENCOMPASS in 2017 to focus on inclusive placemaking. The 2018 ENCOMPASS focuses on diversifying the professional practice of architecture. Our 2019 ENCOMPASS will focus on inclusive procurement strategies.

So what are those steps? What is the best framework to implement these recommendations? What metrics of success do we want to establish? We are committed to leading the way forward and we need your participation to make this happen.

Join us on April 24 at ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture and let’s engage in an open dialogue that will set the parameters for how we adhere to this call to action.

AIA|LA is fortunate to be the local chapter of one of the world’s most diverse regions in the world. Los Angels is famous for its wealth of human resources and we are proud to be at the leading edge of diversity. It is that diversity that gives us our leading edge on creative innovations in design. However, we still have a long way to go to ensure greater equity, diversity and inclusion especially when you consider the professions urgent need to attract emerging talent and ensure younger generations seek careers in the A/E/C profession.

In a quickly evolving and thriving Los Angeles, diversity increases the promise of our design practice to deliver solutions. Diversity adds value and benefits to our ability to deliver smart solutions to clients. Diversity, in fact, provides the capacity to better support our own region with the improvements to ensure health and prosperity for all. But the actual composition of the AIA|LA doesn’t reflect the region’s diversity. For example: only 5% of AIA|LA members identify as Latino; only 2% identify as black. As AIA National focuses on strengthening core values, AIA|LA will host ENCOMPASS: Inclusive Architecture to bring practitioners together to address solutions for moving forward.

Focused on actualizing diversity and inclusiveness in order to advance the profession, generate opportunity, and better serve the demographics of the region, this annual AIA|LA conference:

+ Provides valuable tools for Firms and Individual Practitioners+ Highlights best practices
+ Examines case studies of design procedures that lead to inclusiveness within the field
+ Demonstrates diversity’s benefits to clients and users
+ Initiates dialogues that underscore solutions to counter the prevalence of the inherent biases that too often continues to divide A/E/C professionals.