Letter from the Chair

Letter from the Chair
By James L. Binkley, FAIA

COTE has five active programs: The Top Ten Green Projects, Relationships with Allied Organizations, Greening Initiatives, Ecological Literacy in Architecture Education, and Communications. Read on for the latest info about them...

Features

2006 Top Ten Green Projects
AIA COTE has announced the winners of its annual Top Ten Green Project recognition program. Three of them are reuse or renovation projects. One single-family house was included, and the rest feature environmental organizations' projects, private projects, and civic and university projects.



Los Angeles COTE Celebrates Greening the AIA Convention
To help in the greening of the AIA National Convention, The Los Angeles COTE has several projects under way, including developing an LA Metro Green Map and arranging a cocktail party hosted and sponsored by the South Group in Elleven, the first completed LEED condominium tower in downtown Los Angeles, which is within walking distance from the convention center. The building was designed by Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects for South Group, an award-winning developer known for urban investment. We hope to see you all there on Thursday, June 8, 2006, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Expanding Our Approach
In April 2005, a group of architects, developers, engineers, scientists, educators, and writers convened to begin imagining a new understanding of their work. They came up with questions and ideas—about place-based design, living systems, integral thinking, and other evolving approaches.” This initiative, supported by the U.S. General Services Administration, is detailed in a report Expanding Our Approach to Sustainable Design—An Invitation.

Needed: Federal Leadership
By Henry Siegel, FAIA, Vivian Loftness, FAIA, and Kira Gould, Assoc. AIA 
The federal government has via several channels encouraged the mainstreaming of green building practices, but in this article in Contract magazine, the authors offer that the time has come for the feds to step up efforts to accelerate the green building market transformation.

The SEED Network
By Barbara Brown
The SEED (Social/Economic/Environmental Design) Network is a collective of practitioners, activists, and theorists devoted to collaborative, community-based design. Encouraging what Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Frederick P. Rose Architectural Fellowship, refers to as a “more holistic ethic for building,” the group acknowledges an inherent value in involving community members in the shaping of their built environment, while still balancing other aspects of thoughtful design.

What is the AIA Sustainability Task Group? 
The 2006 Sustainability Task Group's is charged with making recommendations for a comprehensive AIA strategy to enable the profession to meet the challenges of sustainability. Areas of focus for the task group are education, research, and advocacy and regional, community, and building design. The group broadly represents the AIA Board of Directors and Knowledge Communities.

Book Reviews by COTE Members
Each issue, we invite COTE members to review some of the books they are reading. Some are newly released; others are books  published years ago that we still go to day after day. The books reviewed in this issue are Building for Life, A Safe and Sustainable World, Superbia, and Outside The Not So Big House.

EPA Honors Architecture Firm: Innovative Design
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Innovative Design, a Raleigh-based architecture firm, for Excellence in Energy Efficiency. The firm was honored at the 2006 Annual ENERGY STAR® Awards dinner on March 21 as the first architecture firm to receive recognition for energy-efficient design.


Green Housing Guidelines
COTE supports the efforts of many of the AIA knowledge communities as they weave sustainability issues into their missions and goals. Last year, the AIA Housing Committee developed a section on Green Housing Guidelines for the Affordable Housing Design Advisor, a tool developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Enterprise Institute, and AIA. 

SBIC Releases Energy-10 Version 1.8
The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) has just released Version 1.8 of the award-winning ENERGY-10 software. For the first time, building designers will have an easy-to-use tool to help them integrate the photovoltaics and solar domestic hot water in an energy-efficient building. These solar features were added to ENERGY-10 Version 1.8 at the urging of the solar industry. Version 1.8 offers many new features.

News

Dispatch: Regional Green Building Summit in Seattle 
By Jared Silliker
The U.S. Green Building Council and its Cascadia Region chapter hosted a daylong summit in Seattle on January 30.
The overarching topic was forward-looking, anticipating the eventual LEED version 3.0. The discussion focused on what the next generation of LEED might look like, and the answers were many and varied.

Announcing Publication of the Journal of Green Building
The first issue of the Journal of Green Building is now available. It is the first publication of its kind to present current research findings and new directions related to green building and high-performance built facilities and infrastructure.

REPRINT: Environmental Building News

In each issue of COTEnotes, we reprint an article from Environmental Building News, which is published by BuildingGreen. This company is committed to providing accurate, unbiased, and timely information designed to help building-industry professionals and policymakers improve the environmental performance, and reduce the adverse impacts, of buildings. The company offers print and electronic resources to help people design and build construction projects from a whole-systems perspective and take an integrated design approach that minimizes ecological impact and maximizes economic performance.

Why It’s Imperative That We Raise Energy Taxes
The best way to extend the availability of oil and gas is to reduce demand, and the best way to reduce demand, I’m afraid, is to make fossil fuels more expensive—significantly more expensive.

To help meet the growing green design information needs of its 77,000 members, the AIA recently signed an agreement with publisher BuildingGreen, Inc. The agreement provides AIA members with an immediate 30 percent discount on new and renewing individual subscriptions to BuildingGreen Suite, which includes in-depth articles, case studies, news, and product information.

Visit these sites for more information:

More "Green" for Less Green, Save 30 Percent on BuildingGreen Suite—aia.org
AIA, BuildingGreen Ink Deal—buildinggreen.org article

To help meet the growing green design information needs of its 77,000 members, the AIA recently signed an agreement with publisher BuildingGreen, Inc. The agreement provides AIA members with an immediate 30 percent discount on new and renewing individual subscriptions to BuildingGreen Suite, which includes in-depth articles, case studies, news, and product information.

Local COTE Spotlight

COTE Chapter Mobilizes in Eastern Oklahoma
In January 2005, AIA Eastern Oklahoma organized a COTE co-chaired by Todd Stephens and Molly Jones, AIA. The members of this COTE are already on their way to a success, judging by their recent offerings, which include GO!GREEN: Home Edition, an afternoon workshop on residential energy-efficient applications—workshop sessions addressed solar power, zero energy living, energy efficient strategies, home maintenance, financial incentives for energy efficiency, and how to select a sustainable architect and/or contractor.

Resources

Calendar of Events
from BuildingGreen.com

Have you read… ?
Links to recent articles and Web sites of interest
Ten U.S. Cities Best Prepared for an Oil Crisis
Architects' Family Basks in the Sundial Effect
Loving Children: A Design Problem
Top Ten Green Cities in the U.S.

What would you like to see in future issues? Send e-mail to AG member Kira Gould or COTE’s project manager, Marsha Garcia.