CELEBRATE ARCHITECTURE
The 2023 Celebrate Architecture Symposium will take place Friday, March 17, 2023 in the Manship Theatre at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge, LA
Melissa and Brian Rome are honored to organize and host Celebrate Architecture for AIA Louisiana. Their mission is to continue the tradition of bringing the world’s leading architects to Louisiana to share their work and discuss current trends of practice.
Created in 2000 by Doug Ashe of Ashe | Broussard | Weinzettle, Celebrate Architecture has welcomed over 70 internationally recognized architects to Baton Rouge for a one-day design symposium. Each year over 300 architects and students have the opportunity to see the work and learn about the design process of leading architects from around the world. Through Doug’s leadership, AIA Louisiana was able to establish the Celebrate Architecture Scholarship Program, which awards a total of $10,000 of profits to selected students at each of the schools of architecture in the state of Louisiana.
CA 2023 Speakers
Shohei Shigematsu
OMA, New York City
OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis. Shohei Shigematsu leads the firm’s diverse portfolio of projects, spanning typologies and scale. Sho’s cultural projects currently in progress include a museum expansion for the New Museum in New York City; a holistic campus renovation and new building for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; a new arts center with a theater and concert hall for University of Illinois at Chicago; and an underwater sculpture park and sculpture for the ReefLine in Miami Beach. His engagements in the arts include collaborations with multiple artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang, Marina Abramovic, and Taryn Simon. Sho’s work in fashion ranges from branding and flagships to exhibition and scenography—from Coach Omotesando flagship and intervention for Tiffany & Co.’s 5th Avenue Landmark in New York, to exhibition design for the Met Costume Institute and scenography for Dior retrospectives. His works in Japan include Tenjin Business Center in Fukuoka and OMA’s first tower in Tokyo. Sho has been a visiting professor at Cornell AAP, Harvard GSD, and Columbia University GSAPP. He is currently a professor at Kyushu University and Director of BeCAT (Built Environment Center with Art & Technology).
Florian Idenburg
SO-IL, New York City
SO – IL is an internationally-recognized architecture and design firm based in New York. Florian Idenburg is a Dutch architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO–IL in 2008 together with Jing Liu. His years of working in cross-cultural settings make Florian a thoughtful and collaborative partner. With a joyous demeanor, he pursues innovation through working together. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects as the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis as well as Amant in Brooklyn. His strength lies in generating imaginative ideas and transforming those into real-world spaces and objects. Idenburg has a strong intuition for the orchestration of form, material, and light, and enjoys developing projects to a level where those elements become places for people to experience and use. He combines a hands-on approach with a theoretical drive, sharing this creative spirit with clients, collaborators, and students. A frequent speaker at institutions around the world, he has taught at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, and Princeton University and is currently a Professor of Practice at Cornell University. In 2010, Idenburg received the Charlotte Köhler Prize from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund.
Will Doss
Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA
Will Doss is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Louisiana Tech University’s School of Design. Prior to joining the faculty in 2019, he worked as the Lead Designer at a small architecture firm in Plano, Texas, where he was responsible for a diverse range of projects. Since joining Louisiana Tech, Mr. Doss has led classes from first-year to fourth-year studios, as well as special topic theory courses. He is also a part of the newly-formed Digital Track studios, where he focuses on innovation in design methodology through employing new technologies and theoretical frameworks. Mr. Doss is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary connections between the architecture program and other academic and professional areas. He has successfully completed collaborative Digital Track studios with the Interior Design and Game Design programs at Louisiana Tech. Using computational strategies and virtual and augmented reality hardware encourages a multiscalar process that critically addresses the nature of contemporary production and interaction. His research into projects that utilize computational strategies and multidisciplinary partnerships offers students in the northern region of Louisiana the opportunity to explore architecture beyond the regional vernacular and traditional production methods.
