By Thompson E. Penney, FAIA

There continues to be much concern surrounding the AIA National Board’s
decision not to award a Gold Medal this year. The disappointment is understandable. Understandable, too, is the call by many—both inside and outside the AIA—to revisit the Gold Medal nomination and selection process. This is healthy.

However, I think we should take full advantage of the opportunity that such scrutiny affords. As I see it, we have been given an invitation to think deeply and creatively about the fundamental purposes of our entire recognition program, from Honorary Membership and Fellowship to the Kemper Award, the Honor Awards, and the Gold Medal.

It’s a matter of good stewardship to take stock periodically and do some post-occupancy evaluation, if you will, of such important assets. How effectively do they communicate to the profession, to the industry, to clients, and the public what we stand for? In other words, what do they say about our values?

Communicating “value” or, more to the point, “values” ought to be the uppermost concept or principle that permeates the entire AIA awards program. Our awards ought to say clearly and powerfully what we know in our hearts and minds is important. What exactly does the AIA stand for? How do we want clients and the public to think about architects? Should our awards promote issues of livable communities, sustainability, client satisfaction, cost consciousness—to name a few? If promoting the AIA, architects, and architecture itself is the mission of our awards program, then a key element of this program ought to be its orientation: Is it primarily inward looking recognition of our peers, or does it seek to engage an audience larger than architects?

Questions of values, purpose, and orientation are matters that need to be addressed on a regular basis. This is precisely the task I’ve set before the AIA’s Secretary’s Advisory Committee. They have a green light to take a full top-to-bottom look at our awards program, guided by this one directive: that the values communicated by what we honor are clear, compelling, and capable of leveraging positive change within our profession and society as a whole.

An insistence on values can promote positive change. Not so very long ago, the AIA was facing a rising tide of outrage from young men and women who felt they were being exploited at the beginning of their professional careers by being asked to work for free. The AIA could have put into place a punitive policy aimed at stopping the practice. Instead, the Institute required that AIA members applying for an award or service as elected leadership of the AIA had to certify that they paid their interns. Instead of proceeding negatively, we proclaimed our values through our awards criteria and brought about positive change.

We have such an opportunity today. I believe similar good is possible if we use this time of reflection to define a system of values that conveys a compelling message about what the AIA stands for to our members, the profession, and, most importantly, to society.

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