During most years the speakers for the Celebrate Architecture design symposium come from all over the country, but this year we kept things more neighborly by reaching out to architects from Texas, Mississippi, and for the first time, Louisiana. It was another great gathering for the annual all-day event held in Baton Rouge, with over 200 AIA Louisiana members converging at the Shaw Center for the Arts.

We were happy to host Steve Dumez the Director of Design of the New Orleans-based architectural studio Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, who recently won the national AIA’s 2014 Architecture Firm Award; Juan Miró and Miguel Rivera of Miró Rivera Architects out of Austin (Juan and Miguel pictured above with moderator, Doug Ashe); and Anne Marie Decker of Duvall Decker Architects based in Jackson, Mississippi. This year’s symposium was focused around the idea of transformative architecture and how each of the speakers’ firms reconciled the cultural and environmental conditions of a region, local building traditions, and constraints into innovative architecture that transforms a place. The speakers did not disappoint, and shared several projects that exceeded mere conditional responses and were inspirational in both scope and commitment.

Doug Ashe served as moderator and continues to organize the event on behalf of AIA Louisiana. Mike Nichols designed the event media, marketing materials, and coordinated the production of the presentations.