Join us this Wednesday for the next Soul of the City: How to Balance Old with the New as part of the AIACV Architecture Festival happening now.  Facilitators for this dialogue will be Bruce Monighan, AIA and Craig Hausman, AIA. As we look for ways to make out cities more sustainable we have many tools available and one of the best of those is to use infill of existing lots and to increase unit density and/or site coverage. Infill brings with it new challenges as higher densities, increased square foot per square foot of site, the use of sustainable materials and sustainable design theories are often expressed differently than in older buildings. Existing neighborhoods are typically a mi

Please join us for the next Soul of the City diagloue on Urban Agriculture, which is a part of the AIACV Region Architecture Festival going on now! As we all know, the best restaurants in town have long preferred local source food, and the public appetite for it has increased steadily. This program will address the full spectrum of urban agriculture, from edible front yards to urban farming community gardens. Bill Maynard, Community Garden Program Coordinator for the City of Sacramento; Claire Napawan, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architect at UC Davis; and Marq Truscott, FASLA a local landscape architect will facilitate the discussion. The discussion is part of the AIACV Chapter's

Soul of the City is back for another great community discussion. The next dialogue is Wednesday, June 27th and focuses on “Street Food in the City”--- an engaging dialogue on food trucks and their impact on the Sacramento Area. Where are the food deserts in the area? Can food pods revitalize a community and if so, where should they be? What are the current city codes on food trucks and how are food trucks affected by them? Where should food trucks park or not park? What are other cities doing with food trucks and pods that make them successful? These are just a few of the questions that will be discussed and mapped in an interactive environment. This dialogue will be a little different

Soul of the City is back! If you missed the kickoff event in February, then Wednesday April 25th is your next opportunity to participate in this engaging community dialogue series. This installment will follow the same interactive 'live-audience-questionnaire' format and will focus specifically on identifying special urban open spaces in our region. What do you think makes a good place to visit in our urban environment? Where are the most successful examples? Join us for this lively discussion that seeks to define where they are and what makes them great. This is the second of five planned dialogues this year which seek to bring designers and community members together to identify what qu

The Soul of Sacramento, “What is it? Where is it? Let’s find it and celebrate it”. Facilitators: Kim Alexander of California Voter Foundation, Saxon Sigerson, AIA, Jason Silva, AIA and David Sarti, AIA. Sacramento is a place where people enjoy a unique quality of life – our goal is to create a resource to help people find what it is about our city that makes it such an enjoyable place to live? In an effort to create this resource we will be engaging event participants in a lively, interactive discussion, asking for your thoughts and feelings around a series of questions. Sample questions: • Where are the lovely courtyards? • Where is your favorite alley? • Which street might you walk do

New for 2012!!  Soul of the City is an engaging dialogue series between the public and the design profession on issues of importance to the community and the region with focus on improving communication, understanding and collaboration (formerly known as the 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue series).  Organized by the AIA Central Valley Chapter and the ASLA California Sierra Chapter, the dialogues are listed below for the year and the topics have come directly from the public and the profession from one of our dialogues last year.  We look forward to seeing everyone again this year for some engaging conversation!  See you at the first dialogue on February 29th, where we will kick-off the serie

Please join us on Wednesday evening, September 28th at 5:45pm at the AIA Central Valley Chapter office for this month’s 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue (4WDD). Encouraging community design excellence through the recognition of projects that exhibit Smart Growth principles in planning design and development actions. The Smart Growth Leadership Recognition Program seeks to encourage and promote those projects. How can this program be a benefit to your community and city? Find out at this month’s 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue presented by Bruce Monighan, AIA. For more information on the Smart Growth Leadership Program follow the link below. http://www.aiacv.org/resources/smart-growth/ Click he

Please join us on Wednesday evening, August 24th beginning at 5:45pm for this month’s 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue (4WDD). “Complete Streets” is the inspiring story of the planning, re-design and transfiguration of West Sacramento’s main street area: West Capitol Avenue. The project completely transformed a portion of old highway US 40 with a wide variety of improvements including new, widened sidewalks, re-structured roads, contiguous bicycle lanes, pocket plazas, landscape plantings and iconic bus shelters which celebrate the City’s unique identity. The re-development of this area has served to foster community spirit by addressing the needs of West Sacramento’s residents and employee

Today, August 17, from Alaska to Florida and everywhere in between, landscape architects across the Country will hold events to educate the public about our profession. Locally, Capitol Park will host landscape architects who will be sketching to re-envision nearby spaces, handing out information and answering questions about what we do. The national campaign has over 150 events taking place during lunch hours coast to coast. Please come out and ask us some questions! If you can't make it, follow the events and campaign online using the links below. Where: Capitol Park, near 11th and L St When: from noon until 1pm What: Landscape architects drawing, talking and answering questions about

Please join us on Wednesday evening, July 27th beginning at 5:45pm at the AIA Central Valley Chapter office for the this month's 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue (4WDD). LPAS Architecture + Design will be talking about their design and experiences with the Vegetative Green Roof at their newly constructed California State Lottery Headquarters. Curtis Owyang, Brady Smith and Dave Cubberly from LPAS will be giving the presentation and answering questions about the project and the first green roof of its kind in Sacramento. The California State Lottery Headquarters is LEED Gold Registered. Click here for the flyer. The event is FREE and open to anyone. Refreshments provided. Please RSVP to info@

There's a lot more green on a tree than just its leaves! At this month's 4WDD ISA-Certified Arborist Scott Gregory will talk about assessing the economic and environmental benefits of the urban forest. In April, Scott successfully defended his master's thesis, "Quantifying Street Tree Function and Distribution: Analysis of Environmental Services, Population Characteristics, and Sidewalk Uplift in the City of Chico, California". His thesis entailed inventory of 34,950 street trees, stumps, and available planting sites within the City of Chico and subsequent data analysis to quantify environmental services provided by the City's street trees. By identifying public and private trees in adva

Please join us on Wednesday evening, May 25th beginning at 5:45pm at the AIA Central Valley Chapter office for the this month’s 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue (4WDD). Gus Fischer, Architect and Partner with Dreyfuss & Blackford Architects will present their project, The California Independent System Operator (CA ISO) Headquarters facility. Gus will discuss how they are achieving LEED Platinum and its impact on the culture and community. This secure 275,000 SF complex on a 27 acre site is a consolidation of the organization’s operations, offices and public education components and just completed construction. The event is FREE and open to anyone. Refreshments provided. Please RSVP to info@

How can we design ‘greener’ landscapes in Sacramento?  With the growing focus on water conservation, responsible use of resources, and the impacts of the built environment on human health and well-being, the conversation about what makes a site design ‘green’ is being elevated to a higher level. From pre-design and planning through construction and operations, a new rating system, dubbed ‘SITES’, has been developed which sets the bar for what we can do to design more sustainable places.  Developed to be incorporated into future versions of the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, SITES is currently in its pilot project phase.  Please join us on Wed

In the residential sector, a building that produces as much energy as it consumes, or a Net Zero Energy (NZE) Building, is increasingly technologically viable. Yet, to achieve true scalability, these high-quality, efficient and architecturally advanced buildings must be coupled with affordability. Please join us on Wednesday Evening, Feb 23th beginning at 5:45PM at the AIACV Chapter Office for this month’s 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue (4WDD) where Shilpa Sankaran and Taeko Takagi of ZETA Communities will discuss an innovative approach to achieving affordability with offsite precision-building. The team will also present project case studies and live energy performance tracked by the DOE