The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s call for this years papers invited submissions on a variety of topics, all related to the global nature of architectural practice today. The number of topics related to socially impactful work is encouraging. Even more exciting is the acceptance of a paper that Leah Faulk Kemp, Assistant Director of the Carl Small Town Center (CSTC), and I co-wrote. Our paper, titled Building Social Building, presents four lessons learned through the work of CSTC as instructive in implementing community driven design projects. We can’t share the paper until after our presentation, but here are some soundbites:

• Public Interest design has trust issues.

• Public interest architecture is public; this means it’s political.

• Social impact design is about more than three bottom lines.

• Social impact work must be impactful.

We will share more about the paper and our presentation in April!