Improve your understanding of the fundamental business concepts in architecture and design. Learn the significance of business acumen in your professional journey and gain insights into how you can use it to have the greatest impact on your career. Dive into the current and historic internal and external business dynamics—from organizational culture to economic conditions—shaping architecture and design firms to establish a crucial foundation for making informed and strategic decisions. Course expires 5/15/2027

Learn the essential skills and insights needed to develop effective team leadership and cultivate positive team dynamics. Understand the six essential characteristics of team excellence that distinguish high-performing teams from average ones so you can analyze individual roles and nurture the key traits that drive successful teamwork. Plus, dive into the major impact employee engagement can have on team performance—learning actionable strategies to boost engagement and motivation among your team. Assess the influence of team dynamics on productivity and performance and acquire practical techniques to optimize these dynamics, ensuring that your team works cohesively towards shared goals. Course expires 04/06/2027

Ready to take your leadership skills to the next level? In this interactive course, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of the core leadership principles needed to become an effective leader in any organization. Explore various leadership styles, including autocratic, democratic, transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire, and discover the situations when each style is most suitable. You'll also learn the key elements for creating a leadership vision statement that motivates and drives your team and/or organization. Get actionable insights to enhance your leadership skills with six proven practices to propel you toward becoming a more effective leader. Whether you're a seasoned leader seeking to refine your abilities or an aspiring leader ready to take your first step, this course will empower you to become a more confident leader capable of inspiring, motivating, and driving positive change. Unlock your potential on your path to leadership excellence.

In today’s competitive and turbulent marketplace, it can be a challenge for design firms to reach and maintain sustained growth. That’s why developing your firm’s strategic planning and learning new growth strategies is vital to your firm’s success. In this course, you will learn about the strategic planning process and explore growth strategies such as market development, diversification, and strategic alliances. You’ll also understand how to incorporate the components of the business model canvas into your decision-making to develop and implement effective strategic plans that drive firm growth.  

Propel your practice’s success with the AIA Framework for Design Excellence—the defining 10 principles of design excellence in the 21st century. In this introductory course, you will learn the origin, evolution, and significance of each of the framework’s principles and examine how they advance progress toward a zero-carbon, healthy, just, resilient, and equitable built environment. Learn from real-world case studies showcasing successful implementations across diverse firms and project types. Plus, you’ll learn how to navigate the valuable online resources for each of the 10 principles to use in your design process for future projects. Course expires on 2/04/2027.

With the trend toward decarbonization increasing interest in net zero carbon buildings and on-site renewable energy, it is essential architects and design professionals understand the process and factors to consider, the best practices and procedures, and where to find the resources to complete a zero energy building design. The Advanced Energy Design Guide (AEDG) Series has been supporting this effort for over a decade. The guides provide definitions and processes; solution sets by climate zone with a mix of prescriptive and performance-based approaches; guidance on strategies, including whole-building integration approaches; recommended energy targets; and examples of buildings with performance data showing proven techniques and achievable targets.   Adapted from the Advanced Energy Design Guide for K-12 School Buildings and featuring case studies of zero energy K-12 schools, this highly interactive, self-paced learning program offers recommendations, strategies, and resources for achieving zero-energy commercial buildings to help design practitioners improve their skills in high-efficiency building design.  The course was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in partnership with the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Course expires on 8/9/2026.

Let's talk about reuse. Designing for the circular economy, where materials are endlessly reused and waste is eliminated, requires a completely new mindset. This conversation explores how architects can and should design buildings to be taken apart and reused as part of the circular economy, an effort entailing the use of smaller palettes of reusable materials and the development of blueprints for disassembly as well as assembly. Course expires 10/3/2024

This session discusses thermodynamics and the laws of heat transfer and the application of these concepts to buildings to show how, where, and why heat flows through walls. Topics addressed include Fourier's Law, R-values and insulation, windows and fenestration, infiltration, control layers, and commissioning.  Course expires 03/05/2025

Wednesday, September 18, 2024  |  2:00-3:30pm EST

Dive into the work of UNA Barbara e Valentim—a São Paulo-based studio focused on enhancing public and private spaces for better collective and individual life. Discover the diverse cultural and environmental issues in the Global South and how São Paulo's architects, planners, and iconic projects have helped shape the modern architecture movement globally. 

Explore and be inspired by designs that exemplify refined materiality, climate adaptation, contemporary construction methods, and a respectful relationship with natural surroundings, with projects ranging from residential buildings to large facilities and public spaces. You’ll learn how architects in different contexts address current habitation issues and how regional design approaches are interpreted at various scales—enriching your understanding and perspective on global architecture and design.  Presented in partnership with the Committee on Design (COD).

Thursday, September 19, 2024  |  3:00-4:00pm EST

This course introduces learners to the electric fireplace category and related technologies. The course will examine the project sectors, property types, program goals and end-user demographics that best suit electric fireplaces. Green-building requirements and safety standards for electric fireplaces will be discussed.

This free live course is brought to you through a partnership with Hearth and Home Technologies. By registering for this course, you grant AIA permission to share your name and email address with Hearth and Home Technologies. 

Intended for licensed architects, engineers, or certified building inspectors, this training certifies attendees as Building Evaluators in the nationally recognized Safety Assessment Program (SAP).

• September 25-26, 2024  | 12 - 4pm ET 
• To register | Click Add to cart and complete the checkout process.
• Evaluator Field Manuals |  ATC 45 | ATC 20 | Participants are responsible for purchasing these texts from ATC. They are not included in the course cost.

The program is managed by Cal OES with cooperation from professional organizations, including AIA. It utilizes volunteers and mutual aid resources to provide professional engineers, architects and certified building inspectors to assist local governments in safety evaluation of their built environment in an aftermath of a disaster. SAP is the training standard of the AIA Disaster Assistance Program, which provides leadership, advocacy, and training to architects who are interested in volunteering their professional skills in times of crisis. This workshop will teach participants to conduct rapid damage assessments of structures affected by earthquakes, wind, and water. Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to consistently and safely assess structures for habitability and will receive a nationally recognized Cal OES registration ID card from the state of California.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024  |  12:00-1:00pm ET

As universal drivers continue to develop, sustainability and wellness have taken the spotlight. We will explore universal drivers that will keep the topics of sustainability and wellness at the forefront both today, and well in the foreseeable future. We will then use the most up to date research to explore how these driving factors shape micro trends in the commercial built environment. Next, we will discover new sustainable materials and the latest technologies on the horizon that can positively impact both the environment and wellness of those who live and work in commercial spaces. Lastly, we will touch on the importance of color in sustainable architecture and design. We will learn how color can aid in safety and wellness, as well as their proven health benefits in one’s physiological and psychological responses.

This free live course is brought to you through a partnership with Sherwin-Williams. By registering for this course, you grant AIA permission to share your name and email address with Sherwin-Williams. 

Join AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, and AIA President Kimberly Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC, for our quarterly conversation about the AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index (ABI). The ABI is a leading monthly economic indicator that uses proprietary AIA data to predict nonresidential construction activity 9–12 months ahead. Get ahead of emerging challenges and opportunities and inform your strategic planning with key insights into the industry’s latest economic data and trends

Thursday, November 7, 2024 | 2pm ET Join AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, and AIA President Kimberly Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC, for our quarterly conversation about the AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index (ABI). The ABI is a leading monthly economic indicator that uses proprietary AIA data to predict nonresidential construction activity 9–12 months ahead. Get ahead of emerging challenges and opportunities and inform your strategic planning with key insights into the industry’s latest economic data and trends. This free live course is brought to you through a partnership with Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope. By registering for this course, you grant AIA permission to share your name and email address with Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope. 

Get an in-depth overview of the accessibility requirements for new and existing buildings and learn how to avoid common compliance issues.  

Invest in your career with this bundle of courses focused on health, safety, and welfare. 

Elevate your sustainable design skills.  

Women’s Leadership Summit, founded by AIA, is a premier event that brings together the industry’s largest network of diverse women in architecture, design, and the allied building industries. It exists to support and empower women on their leadership journeys and break down the barriers that get in their way.  Focused on networking, leadership training, business development, gender equity, and personal empowerment, WLS helps women manifest the careers they want while making a difference in the world.  This bundle focuses on networking, mental health and professional growth. Expires 4/27/2027