Membership
My focus these first months as Country Representative has been to invite well established architects of my country to join AIA, so I can really start a community of talented, engaged, and distinguished architects.
I have reached out to the directors of the main local organizations that gather architects, the School of Architects and the Chamber of Developers, and offered to partner up to promote design innovation and good practices in the industry and invite their members to join AIA.
The director of the School of Architects has become a member and a solid group of six more architects are in the process of completing their membership. I opened up a chat with all of them to exchange.
Future events
The Central American Bank of Economic Integration approved a $171 million loan to support the “National Program of Social Housing”. The chamber of developers is focused on formulating projects to take advantage of the available funds.
In order to support the organization and this national effort, I have held discussions with the president of the chamber of developers to establish different initiatives to collaborate. One of these initiatives is to host a webinar focused on presenting good examples of affordable housing typologies in other countries of Latin America, in order to learn and explore different construction methods to achieve cost efficiency and possibly also the integration of energy saving technologies.
Nicaragua has a lot to learn from other countries in Latin America that have successfully achieved good models of low-income housing development. The regional experience can really make a difference here in how we plan and design these types of developments.
A medium-term initiative that we are working on is to open up a design challenge among Universities. This “Affordable Housing Design Challenge” will ideally result in actual prototypes being built and exhibited. I would like to start a design tradition in the country, where each year a design problem of national interest is brought to the Universities so that architecture students can explore innovative solutions to address this problem.
On the other hand, we are organizing a webinar for the end of November with local architects that are working or have worked on low environmental impact designs, aiming to touch on the local experience with alternative materials. There are various architects here that are just starting to work with renewable, recycled or bio-based materials, which I believe is worth presenting. Likewise, the goal is to present and reinforce ideas of passive design, net zero design,subjects that are a priority in the construction industry but are not discussed or developed enough locally.
I am planning to invite architects to the webinar that have designed the first LEED certified buildings in the country, two projects that are currently under construction. One of them is being executed by my firm SAGA Arquitectos.
Isolda Salinas, AIA
Country Representative - Nicaragua
