1. Second Acts

Research into elder-friendly design, long-term living, senior living, multigenerational housing, and hospice has flourished over the last quarter century across gerontology, healthcare, planning, and architecture. Defining best practices for the next generation of functional, attractive buildings can only be a collaborative effort. To this end, the Environments for Aging Conference in New Orleans, sponsored in part by the AIA Design for Aging Knowledge Community, helped lay the groundwork for high design and optimal spaces for an aging population, Apr. 6–9.

Learn more at network.aia.org/designforaging.

2. Post-Classic Era

It’s often hailed as an underrated masterwork by Philip Johnson, FAIA, but for anyone who’s been to the Pre-Columbian Pavilion at Dumbarton Oaks, flying under the radar was entirely the point. Nestled in the trees at the inside crook of the museum’s L-shaped site plan, Johnson’s supple, marble-paneled piers and glass façade snakes around a hidden square courtyard. Eight circular galleries inside the building contain the Bliss Collection’s Moche pots, stone reliefs, and textiles—the best hidden secret in Washington, D.C. The pavilion turns 50 this year, occasioning Dumbarton Oaks’s “50 Years of Pre-Columbian Art,” which runs through the end of the year.

Learn more at doaks.org.

3. Gulf Coast Green

The Gulf Coast is not just 1,800 miles of coastline; it’s hundreds of bays, inlets, marshlands, and lagoons that constitute one of the world’s largest hubs of economic activity. Sustainable architecture—which includes flood mitigation, design with ecology, and environmentally friendly materials—matters more now than ever before. Join AIA Houston for the eighth annual Gulf Coast Green Symposium on May 2.

Learn more at aiahouston.org.

4. Scientific Methods

For future doctors, chemists, and scientists, the high school chemistry lab is a foundational experience. For future architects, it’s a window into the opportunities in biomedical research environments—and all of the risks involved. Risk and reward will be the central themes of “Guidelines for Laboratory Design: Health and Safety Considerations” (which offers a whopping 38 AIA/HSW credits) at the Harvard School of Public Health, May 6–10.

Learn more at ecpe.sph.harvard.edu.

5. Preservação do Patrimônio

Instiuto de Arquitetos de Brasil (IAB) members have promoted preservation since the early 1980s across the country’s 3.2 million square miles. However, industrialization along the coast and in the hinterland imperils conservation and restoration efforts. This year’s International Conference on Preservation of Historic Monuments, entitled “ArquiMemória 4,” in Salvador da Bahia, takes on the “urban dimension of equity” to find some common ground for heritage conservationists and developers.

Learn more at www.iab-ba.org.br.

6. Drawing Conclusions

When Lebbeus Woods died last year, obituarists struggled to define a man who spent his career rejecting definition. Was he an architect or a draughtsman? Was his art implicitly or explicitly political? Was “experimental architecture” the object of his art, to be built one day, or the subject of his art, to be debated only? Was his worldview dystopian or optimistic—or even naive? “Lebbeus Woods, Architect,” featuring 75 drawings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, hopes to answer these questions. Through June 2.

Learn more at sfmoma.org.