by: AIA New York
On January 14, AIA New York State held a virtual dinner to install their 2021 President, Illya Azaroff, AIA. A long-time and very active member of AIA New York, our chapter looks forward to working with him on issues that matter to our shared membership.
Azaroff is an Associate professor at New York City College of Technology and the founding principal of +LAB architect, a firm with a mission to build resiliency and advance goals for a sustainable, regenerative future through collaboration. Azaroff is also an internationally recognized leader in disaster mitigation, adaption, resilient planning, and design strategies. He regularly works with city, state, and federal agencies, professional societies, not-for-profits, community groups, and foreign governments on building resilient capacity. Currently, he is part of a US Department of Housing and Urban Development-led Resilient Housing Task Force to create new federal guidance around resilient housing. He has also worked with the Alliance for National & Community Resilience (ANCR) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to develop community resilience benchmarking and hazard mitigation plans for the US Virgin Islands and New York City. Azaroff is one of the founding co-chairs of the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee. He also spearheads the AIANY-NYS Unified Crisis Task Force, which was formed to address COVID-19-related architecture and design issues.
“Over the course of the last year, during the pandemic, we have learned a great deal about who we are, what our role in the world has been, and what our role can be,” said Azaroff. “We can now recognize that there are better ways to engage the world in our work and in how we engage with one another. Focusing on the future to create a blueprint for a better world is our mandate as AIA New York State.”