José Luis Salinas Ollé, Hon. FAIA

Treasurer, AIA International and Country Representative - Costa Rica

Founder and Partner, Arquitectura y Diseño SCMTM

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I have been a member of the AIA for more than 21 years and have attended close to 20 AIA National Conventions, always traveling from Costa Rica.

I was elected in 2017 as Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Our firm “Arquitectura y Diseño SCMTM” has been benefited with the knowledge that we have received from the lectures and trade shows in the Nationals Conventions that we have attended.

16 years ago while I was Vice President of the “Colegio de Arquitectos de Costa Rica” ; I accomplished to convince the Board of Directors ¨Colegio¨that we have to work with the AIA, to open the doors to the Costa Rican Architects to improve their professional knowledge. Since then, an agreement for mutual cooperation between both Institutions has been signed and thanks to that. We had the honor to have received in our country 3 AIA´s Presidents in the last few years

In the years 2007 and 2008, I worked to organize the AIA Costa Rican Chapter. I got support from the “Colegio” and the AIA´s Board of Directors. We hired an attorney who legally established the organization in San José. The AIA Preceding Costa Rican Chapter in that moment had more than fifty members during those years, with the inconvenience that we were only Associated Members.

The AIA Board of Directors in the San Francisco´s National Convention, proposed in the Business Meeting a change of the BYLAWS, to allowed the Associated Members to have the possibility to be Full Members but restricted us to be able to work in the USA. This was during the Financial Crisis, and for a few votes the Proposal was rejected.

Since then, I have been very active in the “Colegio¨ ´s International Comity participating always the AIA National Conventions and working always for a long and very successful AIA and “Colegio de Arquitectos de Costa Rica” professional relationship.