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NOMA – community|commitment|change
The Contemporary
Writing live and direct from the Contemporary resort in Disney World, FL for the
NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects) annual conference. The theme for this year is Community | Commitment | Change. The theme is promising and a lot of the seminars and speakers are following through.
The panels so far include everything from, sustainable housing to the re-building of New Orleans to Power-business seminars with successful African American developer
Chauncy Mayfield. Chauncy was the lunch-time keynote and charged the crowd to go out and find opportunities to allow other people within their community to climb 'the ladder'. His work is not really my cup of tea, but his message of professionals going out and making new opportunities for themselves and helping younger professionals resonated with me.
Lunch + Chauncy Mayfield
One thing I have have at times criticized about NOMA is that the minority in NOMA really stands for one specific minority group; African Americans. Nothing wrong with that, except that it becomes a little too limited and too specific at times. Their sister organization
NOMAS (the S is for students), however, is very different. The participating groups in the conference and competition come from all places and backgrounds, what binds them together is an interest to engage communities and do socially responsible work.
FAMU faculty member Derek Ham giving a lecture on re-reading Las Vegas and work in Nigeria.
Tomorrow the different NOMAS chapters in schools from Ball State to Cornell will present their work for this year's competition. I will go check it out, but this time I am here as an spectator with a small delegation from the GSD and we are here with two goals in mind: 1- let people know about the upcoming social-design
SFI-8 Conference to be held in GSD April 4-6, 2008 and 2- to make ourselves available to answer questions to any students that would like to apply to the GSD.
Over the next few days I want to post about the Cartoon Urbanism of Disney World and some images of the student works...
ALL IMAGES IN THIS POST BY JONATHAN EVANS
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