Event Description
As climate events intensify, healthcare costs rise, and affordability pressures deepen, the built environment is where financial strain becomes visible—through damaged assets, unhealthy buildings, and communities pushed toward instability. This session reframes “place” as a systems outcome shaped upstream by policy, procurement, capital planning, and asset portfolio governance—not just by design intent.
Using a practical framework—climate risk, health burden, and economic mobility as the key drivers, with community resilience and social stability as the outcome—participants will learn how architects can lead cross-sector change and translate nature-based, culturally grounded strategies into enforceable standards, RFP language, and performance criteria. Rather than relying on finished project case studies, the session focuses on immediately usable tools: policy/procurement inserts, a portfolio triage matrix, and a starter measurement dashboard to help make high-performing places fundable, durable, and repeatable.
CES: Estimated 1 LU/HSW for AIA Members
Speaker
Barbara Benesh, AIA, NCIDQ, WELL AP, Founder, B. Grace Design
Moderator: Bari Wetmore Salathe, AIA, Owner, BWS – Business & Technical English Services
Speaker Bio
Barbara Benesh is an architect and the founder of B. Grace Design, an integrated strategy and project advisory practice focused on one question: how do we build places that hold people well—especially when systems are under strain? She works at the intersection of climate risk, health outcomes, and economic mobility because she’s seen how “invisible” decisions—policy language, procurement choices, and portfolio priorities—shape everyday life more than most design moves ever will.
Through B. Grace Design’s Designing the Invisible™ approach, Barbara helps developers, institutions, and public-private teams translate values into requirements that can be funded, delivered, and measured. Her work centers on making high-performing, culturally grounded environments more repeatable—so resilience isn’t a luxury, and wellbeing isn’t dependent on zip code.
Barbara is a licensed architect, a WELL Accredited Professional, and a ULI Global Health Leader. She has served in professional leadership, including AIA Coastal Virginia President (2024), and speaks nationally and internationally on the built environment as a lever for healthier communities and stronger civic stability.
Moderator Bio
Bari Wetmore Salathe, AIA is a retired licensed U.S. architect and the owner of BWS – Business & Technical English Services, Switzerland. Drawing on a career spanning architecture, technical communication and business English, she remains actively engaged as a mentor and is a founding member of the AIA International Global Mentorship Program.
