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Letter from the Chair
Hello COTE Community:
As the climate talks take place in Paris, it seems timely to share some reflections on the contributions our COTE Community has made to our profession and our planet over the past year. By no means an exhaustive list, it is certainly something we can all be proud of. To state the obvious, design matters and COTE’s continued efforts to advance responsible, generous, and holistic design matter more and more each year. |
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- All AIA Honor Awards included performance metrics for the second year.
- The first winners of the COTE Top Ten for Students Award joined the celebration at Convention.
- The AIA launched the AIA 2030 Commitment Design Data Exchange advancing the program from an annual assessment tool to a workflow and research platform.
- The impact of the 2030 Commitment reporting firms increased to 2.4 billion gross square feet.
- 197 net zero projects are included in the 2030 Commitment reporting.
- The COTE-AG launched this monthly e-newsletter to our 15,000 membership.
- The Historic Resources Committee and COTE held a shared Colloquium on Building Life Cycle Assessment and materials.
- COTE held a second leadership summit at Convention.
- Leadership from COTE Components and AIA 2030 Working Groups are actively collaborating using Basecamp.
- COTE established topical working relationships with Technology in Architectural Practice, The Historic Resources Committee, Technical Design for Building Performance, The Academy of Architecture for Justice, Practice Management and the Small Firm Roundtable.
This is the 25th Anniversary year of the AIA Committee on the Environment and as I turn the Chair responsibilities over to Paula McEvoy, I would like to express a heartfelt thank you to all of the many professionals who have contributed so much to COTE…and maybe more importantly, a full volume shout-out to those who will advance us in the next 25 years. These years may be some of the most important for the ongoing relevance of architecture and design. I am honored and humbled to be part of this community.
Rand K. Ekman, AIA, LEED Fellow
2015 Chair, AIA Committee on the Environment Advisory Group
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Features
Northern New England AIA COTE Leadership Summit
By Kira Gould, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP
This past June, four Northern New England AIA Committee on the Environment groups hosted a regional leadership Summit to set a course for faster, more meaningful action on behalf of the architecture profession in the context of climate change and all its impacts.
Notes on the AIA Resilience Summit
By Z Smith, AIA, LEED Fellow
Over 35 architects, representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies, and non-profit organizations met for a one-day intensive workshop to share insights and explore policy changes to promote resilience. On Friday, October 16th, 2015, the AIA convened its Resilience Summit at the National Building Museum.
How Do We Preserve Sustainably?
By Steve Cimino for AIA Architect
Carl Elefante, FAIA, spoke of the U.S. need to commit to renovation in Taliesin West's curtain-adorned atrium.
The 2015 AIA Taliesin Colloquium - the third overall but first presented in tandem with the AIA’s
Historic Resources Committee and
Committee on the Environment - used Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., as a backdrop for examining whole-building life cycle assessment (LCA), an oft-discussed method for digging deeper into the impact of materials on the built environment.
Awards Programs
Submit Your Project for the 2016 COTE Top Ten/Top Ten + Awards
The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 5 PM eastern time.
The AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten / Top Ten + Awards is the profession's best known recognition program for sustainable design excellence. Submissions are expected to make every effort to comply with the goals of the AIA 2030 Commitment. The awarded projects will receive significant recognition, including acknowledgement in AIA publications, electronic media, and at the 2016 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in Philadelphia from May 19-21.
Accepting Submissions: 2015-2016 COTE Top Ten for Students
The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 5 PM eastern time.
This is the second annual AIA COTE Top Ten for Students by COTE in partnership with ACSA. The program challenges students, working individually or in teams, to submit projects that use a thoroughly integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology to provide architectural solutions that protect and enhance the environment. The competition will recognize ten exceptional studio projects that seamlessly integrate innovative, regenerative strategies within their broader design concepts.
In the News
Share Your 2030 Successes, Submit a Case Study
The AIA 2030 Commitment is collecting case studies from its reporting firms, looking for details on particularly innovative projects or great stories about how the Sustainable Action Plan has reshaped the practice/design process at your firm. If you have one of these stories, visit bit.ly/2030CaseStudies and submit it today. We want to hear your stories and share them with the architectural world.
We'll gather them over the next few weeks and publish in early 2016 on www.aia.org/2030. If you have any questions, please email 2030Commitment@aia.org. Thanks in advance!
COTE Happy Hour at GreenBuild
During Greenbuild, COTE hosted a happy hour at the AIA booth on the expo floor. Attendees consisting of the COTE Advisory Group, AIA members, and others toasted to COTE's 25th anniversary. The COTE timeline was displayed on the wall for attendees to record where they see sustainability going in the next 25 years.
COTE Celebrates 25 Years with an AIA Tweet Chat
On October 7, COTE Chair Rand Ekman hosted an AIA National Tweet Chat to commemorate COTE's 25th anniversary, discuss the past and future of sustainability and where members see COTE in the next 25 years. See the questions that were asked and how participants answered them.
How Energy Modeling Will Impact the Design Process
By Patrick Lynch for ArchDaily
It’s a topic that cannot be avoided for any longer. The ongoing Paris Climate Conference has seen an unprecedented amount of participation - even before the summit began, over 150 countries submitted national plans of action to the United Nations - and there seems to now be a global consensus that we must cut back on our energy use and reliance on carbon polluting fossil fuels, or risk causing irreversible damage to our planet.
Upcoming Events
2030 DDx Education Webinars
Register now for the next round of AIA 2030 Commitment Design Data Exchange (DDx) trainings! We’ll be offering training sessions via webinar every three months in 2016; the first one will take place on Wednesday, January 13 at 1 PM ET. If you’ve already made the AIA 2030 Commitment and would like more information on how to use our new web-based data reporting tool, sign up now and get a detailed overview on how to enter data and compare projects with similar undertakings from around the globe.
Building Innovation 2016, Achieving a Resilient Future
We’re less than one month away from the one event that gathers all of the building industry players together to collaborate on important industry-wide solutions. Building Innovation 2016: The National Institute of Building Sciences Fourth Annual Conference & Expo, January 11-15, 2016, at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Metro Washington, D.C., is set to coordinate the efforts of all disciplines toward Achieving a Resilient Future.
There are a wide range of opportunities for AIA members to gain valuable benefits from attending this unique Conference:
Join your industry colleagues for this industry-wide collaboration. Online registration ends December 31, 2015. Take advantage of the pre-conference savings and avoid long lines at onsite registration.
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