“A lot of people aren’t informed about what architects really do,” says Wayne Chubb, who works at Hobbs + Black and is president of the Huron Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “We don’t just build pretty spaces. Architecture is about people interacting in a space we created.”

The chapter’s “50+50+50” campaign celebrates fifty years of the local chapter, fifty significant buildings, and fifty ideas for the future. “Last January we asked our members and state members to nominate buildings and spaces with a photograph and description of why they’d nominated it,” Chubb explains. “It didn’t have to be new, but it had to make a difference in the area it’s in. A passionate description went a long way.”

Some of the chosen are recently built, like Polshek Partnership’s Biomedical Research Building on the bend where E. Huron meets Washtenaw. Others are old, like Hermann Pipp’s glass-roofed 1916 Nickels Arcade and Hobbs + Black’s own headquarters, a 1985 renovation of the 1882 Romanesque Revival First Unitarian Church on the corner of State and Huron.

The fifty ideas for the future, Chubb says, are a way “to draw the public into the conversation. We picked the underutilized parking lot at Catherine and Fourth across from Kerrytown. We set up A-frames there on three Saturdays with volunteers and got fifty ideas from the public on what to do with it.”

All members then fleshed out three proposals: “One is for a 365-day extension to the Farmer’s Market,” Chubb says. “A second is for a restaurant market with a terraced green roof. Another is for a mid-rise apartment building with a public sculpture park.”

For now, these are just ideas: the parking lot is owned by the city, and officials haven’t expressed any interest in redeveloping it.