AIA Georgia 2010 Convention - Savannah

As we drove across the bridge into Savannah Thursday afternoon we were hoping that the rainy weather would move up the coast.

 The theme of the conference was "Waves of Change" and it was all about water - the first activity was a sunset dinner cruise on the Savannah River. We boarded at River Street across from the convention center and headed up river to the Talmadge Bridge.

 The ships were huge close up

The bridge is beautiful from the water.

After a full day of great seminars on Friday we headed to the Telfair Museum Jepson Center for a reception and keynote speech by Jean Michel Cousteau about his work with the Ocean Futures Society. I will write a post later on the critical need to conserve water. The food was excellent, especially the Thai chicken rolls...I ate way too many of them. The photo above is me in front of  Daniel Shiffman's interactive video "Swarm" Take a look of it in action...

The color swarms across the screen and mimics the view in front of the camera. The keynote was followed by Pecha-Kucha Night hosted by AIA Savannah at Alligator Soul. A highlight was Ed Atkins presentation on finding unused space in Atlanta to house the homeless and grow food. The billboard apartments were great.

On Saturday we woke to a beautiful day and after the keynote, Michael and I decided to spend the morning exploring Savannah. We left the hotel and wandered down to the river.

We happened upon the 11th annual weiner dog races....there were over 150 dogs racing..it was a hoot!

After trying to watch one heat we realized that we were too late to get a good seat so we continued our stroll. We passed through square after square and came to one of SCAD's classroom buildings..they are all over town. It is an attractive building and maybe was an elementary school in it's former life.

We continued toward Forsyth Park through the Whitaker Street Design District; I love the color of this door.

When we arrived in the park we were detoured around a wedding and discovered two knights jousting!

We headed back to the hotel and an afternoon full of continuing education seminars and the awards gala Saturday night.

I am now back home preparing Jana's 25th birthday dinner!