Summary: This week, readers sound off about “carbon neutral,” pdfs (or lack thereof) for practice articles, the mentor/shadow program at the convention, the Tall Buildings poll, and giving credit where credit is due.

Re: AIA Leadership Pushes Congress for Carbon Neutrality

I am strongly opposed to using the term “carbon neutral” and trying to suggest that it has any merit. If the AIA's political agenda is going to head in this direction, I must be in the wrong organization.

—Ted Baily, AIA
Fritz Baily P.C. Architects, Planners, Designers,Tulsa, Okla.

Re: Best Practices: Double Edged Sword: The Owner’s Separate Consultants

The Best Practices articles by James Atkins and Grant Simpson are some of the best pieces of information distributed by AIArchitect. I am disappointed however, by the lack of a "printer friendly" version. Prior to the recent redesign of your Web site, this feature had been available, and we took advantage to post these articles around our office and keep a copy for future reference. Please consider providing the visitor to your site this option.

—Paul F. Martzke, AIA
Berners-Schober Associates Inc. Green Bay, Wis.

Ed.note: AIArchitect stopped making pdfs for articles, as a cost-cutting measure, because our electronic feedback indicated that very few readers (like 25 out of 80,000 tops) ever printed them out. Were we wrong? If you print out practice articles in pdf format and would like us to provide them in the future, please send us an e-mail.

Re: Minority Architecture Students Shadow AIA Architects at Convention

I am excited to see a program like this succeed at the national convention and I am very encouraged to know this will likely continue as a legacy type project. This past year, the Texas Society of Architects Convention had a similar program for students in our eight accredited architecture programs in the state. The final number of students participating in either being housed in the home of a local architect, having a mentor at the TSA convention, or both was 27. By all accounts, this was a very successful program and will take place again at this year’s convention in Austin. As chair of the TSA Education and Student Liaison Committee, I was fortunate to help TSA staff organize and promote this inaugural event both to my peers as well as to the architecture programs in the State of Texas … Thank you for the providing coverage of events like this at the national convention, and I sincerely hope that other components are encouraged to know that similar events are occurring around the nation.

—Jamie Crawley, Assoc. AIA
TAG International, Austin

Re: This Week's "The World's Next Tallest Building?,” which example do you find most compelling?

Who really cares? What the poll needs is one more notch for those that find this tall contest typical and droll.

—David Philip Walen, Assoc. AIA
Rosenblum Coe Architects, Inc.
Charleston, S.C.

Re: Proper credit

It has always puzzled me how contractors could show buildings designed by prominent architects, without giving architectural credits. This practice is especially curious and offensive when architects are the targets and authors of the copy. Pull your socks up!

—Arthur May, FAIA