President’s Circle

A Message from 2023 AIA New York President Matthew Bremer, AIA, NCARB

New York is back and brimming, and much of what we cherish about our city is thriving again. Yet many of the troubles that have plagued it—economic disparity, a housing shortage, homelessness, threats of the global climate crisis—have grown more evident and urgent. As your incoming AIA New York President for 2023, I challenge each of us, public or private, corporate or individual, to reassess our core values and recommit to working to reclaim New York as a dynamic, resilient, and equitable place for us all and as a shining example to the world.

At this pivotal moment, we should push ourselves to become better and more authentic versions of who we are so as to bring our best to the city. My 2023 AIANY presidential theme is Our City, Ourselves. The title, appropriated from the 1970 feminist book Our Bodies, Ourselves, is both a call to action and a love letter to our city. It’s time to look at our home through a more intimate, honest lens, focusing equally on the public and private realms, particularly as changes over the last three years have caused these spheres to overlap in ways previously unimaginable. We want to look carefully at what makes New York its authentic self, identify what still needs to change, and forge a future that unites our highest aspirations with our unique skills as architects.

Over the course of the year, a range of engagements and programming will ignite our imagination and fortify our will to fight for change in our city and in our world, including:

• Engaging with all 26 of the very active AIANY program committees on how each can adapt the year’s theme to their own core values and missions, and how that can be deployed anew into achievable goals;
• Ensuring that the chapter’s public advocacy efforts address the most pressing issues facing our city, placing architects and our expertise at the center of policymaking;
• Facilitating dialogue between our members and the architecture community at large on issues of workplace equity and labor relations and practices;
• Focusing special attention on ensuring newer, smaller practices feel welcome and heard;
• Forming a new AIANY LGBTQ+ group that boldly addresses issues affecting our community locally and nationally. As your first openly gay chapter president (shocking, no!?), I’m committed to supporting and broadening diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across AIANY;
• Presenting an exhibition in the fall of 2023 exploring how New York can grow and change while retaining its most cherished and authentic self;
• And lastly, organizing a year-long celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of our home, the Center for Architecture.

This is an exciting and critical time of reclamation of our values and of our city. The fact that the world in general and New York in particular will never go back to its February 2020 self is liberating and filled with opportunity. How do we work together to rebuild and grow our city while honoring the qualities that have attracted so many here—its energy, its diversity, its intensity, its culture, its queerness? How do we as a professional community interpret and evolve these qualities while creating a more just and equitable city for the future?  Please join me in exploring the best versions of our city and ourselves.