In the face of mounting industry pressures – ranging from sustainability mandates to labor shortages – the AEC industry must evolve or risk obsolescence. This course equips architects and firm leaders with strategies to turn challenges into opportunities through innovation. Explore a structured approach to diagnosing current pains, envisioning future capabilities, and deploying practical, measurable innovation strategies that align with business goals. Learn how to define success, prioritize initiatives, and drive meaningful transformation in your organization.  This session was recorded live on August 5, 2025.

Digital twins are transforming the way buildings are designed, constructed, and operated, and represent a key emerging technology opportunity to help architects innovate and transform industry. This course demystifies digital twins for AEC professionals, providing a clear framework for understanding their classifications, purposes, and business benefits. Explore the maturity path from simple digital representation to advanced simulation and optimization, and learn how enabling technologies like BIM, AI, IOT, and XR are fueling this evolution. Gain practical insights into how digital twins can deliver operational efficiency, sustainability, and smarter business outcomes.  This session was recorded live on August 7, 2025.

Extended Reality (XR) – encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) – is reshaping the future of architecture, engineering, and construction. This course offers an in-depth look at XR technologies, their relevance to AEC workflows, and their intersection with complementary emerging technologies like reality capture, digital twins, and AI. Discover current and emerging use cases, learn how to evaluate hardware and software options, and build a roadmap for successful XR adoption. Whether you're just exploring or ready to deploy XR at scale, this course provides the essential knowledge to lead your firm into the future.  This session was recorded live on August 12, 2025.

Take a deep dive into architectural ethics—focusing on professionalism, integrity, and competence—in this interactive course examining the AIA Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Gain greater awareness and understanding of how AIA members are committed to the highest standards of practice and how the code guides their conduct in fulfilling those obligations. Plus, learn how the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct can assist in attaining individual and organizational objectives while safeguarding the public's health, safety, and welfare. Course expires: 01/16/2027

Upholding ethical obligations to clients is the cornerstone of a successful architecture practice. This essential course will reinforce your ethics knowledge and skills, helping you effectively navigate ethical dilemmas and prioritize client interests.  Dive into the foundations of client-professional relationships with a focus on the importance of ethical standards and legal requirements and steering clear of conflicts of personal gain. Gain valuable insights into identifying, disclosing, and managing conflicts of interest, ensuring decisions are made professionally and without bias. Build strategies to apply with confidence in your daily practice, including communicating effectively, building trust, ensuring project success, and maintaining the integrity of the architect-client relationship. With a focus on the AIA Code of Ethics, you’ll learn how to align your communication strategies with ethical guidelines—from project initiation to completion—while maintaining transparency and confidentiality. Through analysis of a real-life scenario, you’ll develop the tools to uphold your ethical obligations—making decisions that protect client interests and reinforce the trust and integrity of the profession. This course was developed in close collaboration with members of the National Ethics Council. Course expires 06/30/2027

Emerging technologies will have profound impacts on the urban experience in coming years, with the potential to bring wholesale changes to everything from urban form to mobility and e-commerce. Technology is an integral component of how we plan our cities of the future, creating a host of promising opportunities and daunting challenges. This session will provide a broad overview of the major implications of key emerging technologies unfolding in cities and a framework for understanding urban design and development connections to them.   This session was recorded live on February 1, 2023.

Digital twins are transforming the way buildings are designed, constructed, and operated, and represent a key emerging technology opportunity to help architects innovate and transform industry. This course demystifies digital twins for AEC professionals, providing a clear framework for understanding their classifications, purposes, and business benefits. Explore the maturity path from simple digital representation to advanced simulation and optimization, and learn how enabling technologies like BIM, AI, IOT, and XR are fueling this evolution. Gain practical insights into how digital twins can deliver operational efficiency, sustainability, and smarter business outcomes.  This session was recorded live on August 7, 2025.

Extended Reality (XR) – encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) – is reshaping the future of architecture, engineering, and construction. This course offers an in-depth look at XR technologies, their relevance to AEC workflows, and their intersection with complementary emerging technologies like reality capture, digital twins, and AI. Discover current and emerging use cases, learn how to evaluate hardware and software options, and build a roadmap for successful XR adoption. Whether you're just exploring or ready to deploy XR at scale, this course provides the essential knowledge to lead your firm into the future.  This session was recorded live on August 12, 2025.

From AI to XR—and every acronym in between—the pace of innovation in architecture is accelerating. This free three-part webinar series, sponsored by Egnyte, equips AEC professionals with the strategic knowledge to turn emerging technologies into business value. Whether you're just beginning to explore these tools or are ready to deploy them at scale, this series offers clear guidance on how to evaluate, implement, and lead with digital innovation in practice.

In the face of mounting industry pressures – ranging from sustainability mandates to labor shortages – the AEC industry must evolve or risk obsolescence. This course equips architects and firm leaders with strategies to turn challenges into opportunities through innovation. Explore a structured approach to diagnosing current pains, envisioning future capabilities, and deploying practical, measurable innovation strategies that align with business goals. Learn how to define success, prioritize initiatives, and drive meaningful transformation in your organization.  This session was recorded live on August 5, 2025.

The AIA Framework for Design Excellence now defines good design as that which meaningfully addresses human health, ecological thriving, and social equity. At the same time, new technology, such as AI and advanced situation tools, has entered the forefront of architectural discourse, bringing with it unique challenges and opportunities. To navigate the current era, and to reach the potential of high-performance design, we’ll need a clear vision for how we can most effectively leverage technology to serve human needs. Drawing on a decade of sustainable design leadership, Corey will discuss the unique roles of human purpose and computational prowess within an effective sustainable design process.  This session was recorded live on March 12, 2026.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, yet many professionals remain uncertain about its practical applications. This panel discussion brings together healthcare owners and project delivery professionals to separate the hype from reality. The session will begin by clarifying what AI means for AEC beyond generative chat tools, followed by a data-driven snapshot of current adoption based on a pre-webinar survey of Academy members. Panelists will demonstrate the potential for AI applications in healthcare design and planning, and in particular, discuss how proper AI-assisted code compliance validation and space programming can ensure facilities meet regulatory requirements and support optimal clinical workflows. As AI tools can help identify design deficiencies earlier in the project lifecycle, firms may see a reduction in the number of costly changes thereby improving the overall quality of healthcare environments. The discussion will conclude with practical guidance on how owners and design teams can organize their historical project data today to unlock AI capabilities tomorrow while avoiding siloed point solutions. A live Q&A will ground the discussion in real project experience.  This session was recorded live on March 17, 2026.

This course explores how integrated digital workflows can support architects and designers in evaluating and reducing the carbon impact of building projects. Participants will examine how sustainability data, performance metrics, and benchmarking can be incorporated into early and ongoing design decision making using digital tools. The session focuses on understanding how carbon related insights can inform design alternatives, support regulatory and voluntary reporting requirements, and align project workflows with industry sustainability commitments, including the AIA 2030 Commitment. Emphasis is placed on practical application, data informed decision making, and the role of technology in advancing environmental responsibility within architectural practice. 

Specifications are essential, yet they often lag behind modern design workflows—siloed, text-heavy, and difficult to coordinate. By digitizing resources like AIA MasterSpec within a Common Data Environment, firms can unlock specification data as a foundation for AI-driven workflows. This session shares practical examples of how GenAI improves accuracy, reduces errors, and strengthens collaboration—helping architects transform specifications from a late-stage task into a connected, future-ready practice that accelerates delivery and elevates project outcomes. This session was recorded live on June 17, 2026.

A window must do everything a wall has to do. . . and also allow you to see through it. This is no small task, and when combined with the seemingly infinite number of window profiles available in residential architecture, often make the prospect of detailing them seem like a hopeless task. But there are general principles and rules of thumb that can help demystify and greatly simplify how architects approach window design. This session will discuss those general principles, their technical justification, and application to the most common combinations of window profiles and wall types. The speakers will review flanged and un-flanged window systems and discuss, step-by-step, how they can be properly detailed in both framed and mass walls with various kinds of water and air control membranes. This course will equip architects with better technical skills and information to manage their own risk by providing better details and ensuring those details are followed to completion during construction administration. This session was recorded live on May 7, 2026.

The AIA /AAH Case Study Library, led by the Research Initiatives Committee, transforms award-winning healthcare projects into a shared, practical resource - enabling design decisions that improve patient safety, clinical outcomes, and user well-being.  By standardizing and centralizing peer-reviewed case studies, it helps teams quickly identify strategies, benchmark performance, and make more confident decisions to drive smarter design and stronger outcomes across the industry. Examples will focus on how documented design strategies relate to patient safety, staff workflows, and overall user experience in healthcare settings.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly entering architectural practice, but many architects and design professionals are still determining what it means for their work, firms, and professional responsibilities. Designed for small to mid-size firms but useful to anyone curious about AI, this series of courses will introduce architects to the early stages of AI adoption and how they can use these tools to improve workflows.  Through four short, self-paced courses, you’ll build baseline AI literacy, examine responsible practices, identify low-risk starting points for adoption, and understand how data quality affects AI performance. The series emphasizes practical decision making, risk awareness, and responsible experimentation rather than technical expertise. By the end, you’ll be better prepared to evaluate AI tools and determine how to begin using them. 

How is AI generating content and outputs in firms? What are common misconceptions? How can AI support design, documentation, communications, and daily operations? Drawing from the AIA AI Firm Toolkit, this course covers accountability, review, appropriate use, confidentiality, and AI-ready data. By recognizing AI as a tool rather than a solution, you’ll understand the foundational concepts of AI and learn how to leverage it for appropriate workflows. Rather than focusing solely on what AI can or cannot do today, this course emphasizes durable practices: understanding how AI contributes to work, recognizing when AI outputs may influence decisions or deliverables, and applying professional review before using AI-assisted work. You’ll engage with AI as a changing set of tools and capabilities and understand the importance of prompts, patterns, and professionally reviewing AI-generated work before relying on it.

Using AI responsibly depends on professional judgement, firm policies, approved tools, client expectations, and documentation practices. By understanding AI-related risks, you’ll examine misleading outputs, confidentiality concerns, bias, authorship and attribution issues, and overreliance. The course connects responsible AI use to familiar professional responsibilities, including accuracy, competence, confidentiality, professional oversight, truthful communication, use of sources, client trust, and public welfare. You'll practice identifying AI-related risks, reviewing AI-generated outputs, applying ethical frameworks, and implementing practical guardrails before AI-assisted work informs project communications, decisions, deliverables, or submissions.

The course emphasizes suitable workflows, safe prompting, human-in-the-loop review, and practical application. You’ll practice identifying tasks that are appropriate for AI support, such as summarizing meeting notes or drafting internal communications, using simple and structured prompts when useful, comparing AI outputs, applying follow-up prompts, and reviewing drafts for accuracy, completeness, tone, confidentiality, and project context

AI tools depend on the quality, context, and reliability of the information they are given. In architectural practice, that information may include drawings, models, specifications, schedules, meeting notes, emails, photos, firm standards, templates, proposals, lessons learned, and other project or firm knowledge. This course introduces the 5 Cs of AI-ready information as a practical framework for evaluating whether information is complete, consistent, current, credible, and contextualized for a specific AI-supported task. The 5 Cs are not a pass/fail checklist; they help teams assess whether information is sufficiently ready for the intended task, tool, and level of risk. You’ll explore common data risks, consider how poor information quality can affect outputs, and identify steps to support responsible AI u

As climate risks intensify and project challenges become more complex, architects are increasingly required to design for resilience in ways that are both actionable and measurable. Emerging AI-powered tools, such as Digital Twins and Large Language Models (LLMs), are transforming how practitioners assess risk, test scenarios, and incorporate resilience strategies into their daily workflows.  This webinar will explore how architects can effectively use AI-powered Digital Twins and LLMs to inform resilient design decisions from initial concept through development. Participants will gain an understanding of the limitations and reliability of these technologies and identify opportunities to implement resilience strategies across various projects. The session will focus on usability and applications, helping architects translate emerging technologies into concrete design outcomes.  This session was recorded live on September 3, 2026. Part 1 of the Architect's Role in Disaster Risk Reduction Series.