The AIA COTE® Top Ten Awards have become the profession’s preeminent awards for projects that holistically integrate and exemplify design excellence and building performance, defining a new standard for “good design” that addresses the urgent needs of our time. This year’s winning projects demonstrate that beautiful, high-performance design is possible for every project. This years winners include, sustainable housing for veterans, repurposed spaces that focus on community engagement and learning spacings that promote equity and inclusion.
This presentation examines those projects through the lens of the AIA Framework for Design Excellence to highlight innovative, replicable models for more sustainable development regardless of project type, size, or location. Attendees will gain valuable insight, learn about new techniques, systems, and tools, and leave feeling inspired by the broad range of design solutions presented.
Identify the sustainable design principles that created exemplary features and functionality in the COTE Top Ten award-wining projects.
Explain the sustainable design features that appear among the COTE Top Ten award winners for creating a restorative future through beauty and performance.
Apply lessons learned and technical solutions to comprehensive high-performance design to collectively transform practice.
Discuss more innovative techniques, systems, and tools to reach sustainability and performance goals within their own projects.
The Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law partnered with the AIA to conduct An Investigation into Bias in the Architecture Profession, a survey examining the workplace experiences of members in the profession of architecture. WorkLife Law will present survey data showing how the most common patterns of gender and racial bias impact architects and designers, and how individuals can act to reduce bias in their workplaces. This program is designed to provide architects, design professionals, and firms with Bias Interrupters: basic tweaks to interrupt bias as it is playing out in the workplace.
Gain an understanding of what bias looks like as it plays out in the architecture profession
Identify concrete strategies to interrupt bias on behalf of yourself and others
Learn about the ways architecture workplaces can be different for historically excluded groups
Understand how individual instances of bias can add up to career-defining impacts
This session focuses on how A+D founders and leaders create their own culture with impactful design, and how this is nurtured by design teams, leadership styles, new ways of working, and even, ownership transitions. Join Think-Time Tuesdays host, and SO|arch founder Elisabeth Sporer, AIA CIC for a presentation on design culture that energizes the business of design.
Elisabeth provides an overview of the influencing factors of an office culture from the founder’s values and its impact on client and project selection to the way staff is hired, trained and mentored and how projects are executed in a hybrid work environment. Then Elisabeth is joined in conversation by Los Angeles-based A+D firm leaders Karin Liljegren [Omgvining], Georgina Huljich [P-A-T-T-T-E-R-N-S], Stephanie Ragle [office42], and Monika Haefelfinger [XTEN], who share stories that other founders and leaders of small studios and midsized firms in particular will find useful, on these topics:
- Applied values: Design culture manifested in client selection and project work
- Design teams: Growing the firm
- New ways of working: Collaboration in hybrid mode
- Leadership: Training, mentoring, and ownership transitions
Course expires 03/23/2025
Discern how an office structure influences design culture
Gain an understanding of the importance of job descriptions
Gain additional knowledge of best practices for office design and quality standards
Adapt best practices for their own business
This session was presented and recorded live on December 14, 2021 by AIA Los Angeles as part of the Think-time Tuesdays Series.
How do you create a "radically inclusive" wayfinding system? Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG) hospital recognized that challenges in navigating their campus had become a barrier to serving their community.
ZSFG aspired to develop a comprehensive and integrated wayfinding strategy to support current and future building renovations and additions on campus, construction disruptions, and department and clinic relocations. ZSFG is a high-volume public safety net hospital, trauma center, and healthcare campus serving a diverse population with wide-ranging mobility, sensory, cognitive, cultural, socio-economic, language, literacy, and acuity needs. Originally built in the late 1800's, the expansive campus now has thirteen buildings and continues to grow and change.
In this session, Boulder Associates Architects' research team, BA/Science, describe their person-centered approach which gathered evidence to point designers and decision makers in the right direction. Research activities were designed to understand how diverse campus users create internal maps, calculate routes, and recognize distinct places in current and future states. Results from this study provided recommendations for the design of wayfinding signage & graphics, operational process improvements, and infrastructure improvements.
Learn how to develop a research plan to study campus wayfinding
Understand how to identify campus wayfinding challenges experienced across diverse users
Learn how to collect evidence to identify design features that support and challenge wayfinding
Identify how to apply findings to inform design strategies that promote wayfinding in complex campus environments and across diverse user needs.
In partnership with AIA San Francisco.
Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023 | 2pm ET
Make sure you’re prepared for the rapidly evolving digital revolution with a comprehensive introduction to the core concepts, principles, and applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Learn key components of AI, explore the current and future implications of its use, and gain insights into the real-world applications in the industry.
Whether this is your first foray into the topic or you’re looking to update your skills, this course will equip you with the foundational understanding needed to explore AI further.
Understand the basics of artificial intelligence and its significance in the architecture profession.
Describe the key components of AI, including machine learning, neural networks, and natural language processing.
Discuss the ethical and societal implications of AI and its impact on the architecture profession.
Identify real-world AI applications in the AEC industry.
You cannot control what curve-balls are thrown your way (yes, including a global pandemic), but you can control how you respond. When faced with adversity, feeling lost or even paralyzed, is completely normal, but within life's setback lies a silver lining: an opportunity to lean into the most incredible comeback - and growth - you could have ever imagined. Learn how to work through the five stages of a setback, increase your productivity levels, nurture meaningful business relationships in a virtual world, and build a powerful professional brand based on a strong foundation, mission, and creative, empathetic leadership.
Course expires 10/31/2026.
Understand the five stages of a setback and learn how to use these to increase productivity levels.
Learn tangible, effective methods to build and nurture a quality professional network, virtually.
Design and develop strategies that transform losses into opportunities, using strategies based on effective leadership, emotional intelligence, and empathy.
Discover powerful strategies to refine your mission, rebrand your professional image in a virtual world, and build test with the people around you.
This on-demand session of the Power Moves virtual series is brought to you by AIA's Women's Leadership Summit.
How many architects have you met who said that they got into architecture for money? More often than not, the element of creativity and design was the #1 motivating aspect for someone in the profession. But should it be? After viewing this course, you may become an architect who sees the word “profit” in a different way. Taking the steps and setting the foundation for a strong, healthy, profitable business can lead to an architect having the freedom to create art and more of it. This course presents the basic 12 fundamentals essential to a successful business in architecture, describing how they work and how to apply them in a small firm environment
Examine the 12 steps that are the fundamentals to a successful business in architecture.
Contrast the difference between Sales and Marketing as it applies to an architecture business.
Learn which aspects of your business to prioritize for effective productivity.
Identify unique considerations for structuring a business in the small firm environment.
This session was recorded live at the 2015 CRAN Symposium.