IE School of Architecture and Design, first European school to co-chair the annual meeting of ACSA

The event will be held in Detroit (U.S.) and participants will include prestigious architects from around the world. The meeting is set to take place on March 23 - 25 in Detroit.

IE School of Architecture and Design will be co-chairing the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), now in its 105th edition. IE School of Architecture and Design is the first European school to co-chair the event, which this year will be held in Detroit (U.S.). Participants in the meeting will include prestigious architects from around the world who will examine education challenges in the field of architecture, as well as challenges facing the city of Detroit as it strives to reinvent itself on an architectonic level.

The School’s Dean, Martha Thorne, and members of faculty who teach its Bachelor Degree in Architecture - Grace Ong Yan, Danelle Briscoe, Matan Mayer and David Goodman - will be representing the School and will serve as speakers and moderators in several of the debates that make up the meeting program.

Martha Thorne feels that co-chairing ACSA’s Annual Meeting and having a school from outside the U.S. participating in such an active way encapsulates the best of globalization and trans-continental collaboration. “There is no doubt that IE School of Architecture’s presence at the meeting translates into recognition of the school’s strong reputation,” says Thorne, who will be co-chairing with Luis Francisco Rico-Gutiérrez, Dean of Iowa State University.

The meeting will serve as a platform to examine questions about education in the field of architecture from several different multidisciplinary perspectives.  This year’s meeting will be centered on the theme “Brooklyn says ‘Move to Detroit’”. The key objectives are to illustrate the realities of the city of Detroit, which is currently in the process of reinventing itself on an architectonic level, and to foster conceptual and practical debate that will impact education in the field of architecture around the world.

The city of Detroit is currently in the sights of leading architects and designers because of its capacity for reinvention, its creative talent and its urbanistic potential. This is the reason behind the current tendency to think that the new Brooklyn will be a city in America’s Midwest. Hence, the reconstruction of Detroit is considered the ideal frame of reference in which to examine the influence of design, of urbanistic community-based projects, and the implementation of a new identity by means of architecture and design.

Follow the event through our Twitter account @iearchdesign and the official ACSA account @ACSAUpdate and hashtag #acsa105.