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Jeffry Burchard co-chairs year-long BSA series on challenges, changes within contemporary practice

The Now Practice Now summit will take place on Friday, October 19, 2018, at the BSA Space.

What is the contemporary state of architecture practice? How must practitioners respond to changes in technology, production, and collaboration? Hosted by the Boston Society of Architects, and co-chaired by Assistant Professor in Practice Jeffry Burchard (MArch ’08), Now Practice Now is taking up these foundational questions through a yearlong series of workshops and events that is now underway.

There have been three workshops offered so far this year: STUFF, which looked at what designers are making and why they are making it; TURF, which considered where and how designers are working; and CASH, a deep-dive into how today’s design work is supported. Listen to podcast recordings of the workshops. 

“We believe that in these canonical question lie many of the problems and solutions that are center stage in practice today: equity, inclusion, design’s ambiguity, focus on technology, environmental responsibility to name a few,” Burchard says.

On Friday, October 19, Now Practice Now will hold a summit at the BSA Space to consider and map out links between core aspects of practice and the issues facing designers today. Outcomes from the event will be collected for a publication on the current state of architecture practice.

The summit touches on questions of contemporary architecture practice that captivate many observers within and outside the field. The GSD is producing a parallel symposium on the topic, entitled “PRACTICE: Outside In | Inside Out,” scheduled for Friday, October 12. That event will consider discourse around today’s design practice in two parts: the external pressures, taken up in “Building Practice: Ethics, Agency, and Labor,” and internal forces considered during “The Architect’s Arsenal: Tools and Strategies.” The symposium is sponsored by the Carl M. Sapers Ethics in Practice Fund, and co-hosted by the GSD Practice Platform and the Department of Architecture.

Other GSD faculty on the Now Practice Now committee include Jenny French (MArch ’11) and David Gamble (MAUD ’97). Anda French is co-charing the series with Burchard, in close collaboration with BSA president Jay Wickersham (MArch ’83, JD ’94).