‘A bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.’—Karl Marx
Convene’s feature story, at least in my nearly eight years here.We simply wanted to go to the source—to get as close as possible to the imaginative
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spark—with an architect’s own rendering of a convention center. Pritzker Prize–winning archi- tect Kevin Roche obliged, by sending us his early sketch of the Convention Centre Dublin (CCD) that you see on our cover. The truth is, when we first invited a group of
architects to share their visions of the conven- tion center of the future for this month’s cover story (p. 41), we assumed that sketches of space- ship-like structures beyond our wildest imagin- ing would come sailing into our inboxes. Per- haps we were thinking too far into the future, because just about all of the buildings that these architects etched out for us are actually coming online today. But—built on pillars of sustain- ability, community, and flexibility—they are very clearly designed to carry us into the future. And their conception represents a fundamen-
tal shift in the role that convention centers play in their communities. They are no longer meant to be windowless boxes plopped on tracts of land outside of a city, but to spring up in the cen- ter of it all, giving attendees a view of the partic- ular destination they’re visiting, while creating a gathering place for that city’s own citizens. I was fortunate to be invited to last month’s
grand opening of theCCD—the stunning final product of our cover sketch—and to hear Roche, whose energy belies his 88 years, talk about how he came up with the building’s iconic barrel-fronted glass design. Having a small foot- print to work with, he said, he had to go up rather than across. He also wanted to take
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his issue’s cover marks the first time an illustrator has not been commissioned to conceptualize
advantage of the views afforded by CCD’s dock- lands site: the River Liffey, the surroundingWick- low Mountains, and the city of Dublin itself. Roche combined those external realities with
his experience working with IBM. Because it was important for the company’s engineers to learn from each other informally, he designed office hallways and corridors that were wide enough for them to gather in, with nooks for discussions. Placing the same premium on informal learning and sharing at meetings, Roche designed CCD’s glass barrel to create plenty of open space on each floor, with views to inspire attendees in con- versation and when moving from floor to floor. Anew convention center is always cause for
a city to celebrate. But when it’s a nation’s first purpose-built convention center, it seems fitting to elevate the occasion. Being the land of poets and writers, Ireland marked the event by com- missioning an original work from award-win- ning Dublin poet Micheal O’Siadhail. Despite a serious case of jet lag, I was among the global audience at the opening gala who were caught up in his reading of “Spencer Dock,” because the poem gets to the heart of what these build- ings—and the global meetings industry that supports them—should be about: “let this building be a monument to [our hopes] that in this house we’ll see come from far and wide guilds and fellowships that plan their strategy swapping shop and arguing to sharpen wits, brainwaves, Geistesblitz, colleagues side by side, niche and sanctuary, habitat of trade, debate and bonhomie, live and let live of diversity.”
PLENARY SECTION: Plenary sessions are meant to be fully attended components of meetings.We’ve launched a newfront- of-the-magazine sec- tion by that name, because we’re making it inclusive and “plen- tiful” (as the name implies to me).We hope you’ll enjoy graz- ing the latest industry updates and research, and write-ups of the meeting places and spaces we’ve visited. The research we
present in this month’s Plenary sec- tion comes from a 2010 study byWatkins Research Group that tracked the attitudes of nearly 700 associa- tion, corporate, and independent North American meeting planners. On behalf of the entire team that brings you this magazine each month, I’m enormously proud to share that the Watkins survey respondents named Convene as the No.1 U.S. publication they rely on for information relative to booking large meetings.