Pager Moderates Panel of National Jurors for AIA Austin

Page Senior Principal Larry Speck recently moderated a panel discussion with the AIA Austin 2017 Design Awards jury.

“Larry Speck was an obvious choice to moderate the AIA Austin Design Awards Jury Panel event,” says AIA Austin Executive Director Ingrid Spencer. “He’s a great speaker and his experience as an educator and a firm leader makes him so good at getting people to think and articulate their thoughts. The committee knew he would have provocative questions for the jury and he certainly delivered, asking them to justify why we give design awards at all, and what winning an award means to a firm."

The conversation focused on the importance of design awards for the profession and how the jurors evaluated the award submissions. "The jurors agreed that these awards are more than architects slapping each other on the back," says Spencer. "Design awards can acknowledge the value of certain types of buildings to a larger public, and can inspire the design community to seek design excellence for all types of architecture, from small designs to huge urban planning efforts.”

The larger challenge the architectural profession has in its messaging to the public was also a topic of the evening.

The panel included jurors Cade Hayes, founding partner of D U S T; David Darling, founding principal of Aidlin Darling Design; Elizabeth Moule, cofounder of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and founding partner of Moule & Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists; and Todd Schliemann, design partner in Ennead Architects.