COTE Network Update
By Bunny Tucker, AIA, CPHD
The COTE Network is excited to share two updated resources for local and state chapters: the 2024 COTE Chapter Guide and version 2024.0 of the Common App for Design Excellence. The 2024 COTE Chapter Guide provides resources for new and growing chapters alike. Volunteers developing the Guide synthesized best practices from across the country. We recommend all COTE Chapter leaders take a look at the Guide at the start of each year, to consider new approaches and opportunities. The 2024 COTE Chapter Guide can be found here.
The Common App for Design Excellence is an Excel-based tool, originally conceived of and developed by Corey Squire, AIA; Helena Zambrano, AIA; and Anne Schopf, FAIA; and others. The tool is intended to help streamline sustainability reporting for AIA design awards. Since its inception, more than two dozen Design Awards Committees at the state and local level have adopted the Common App as part of the submission requirements for their chapter’s design awards. Over the past year, the COTE Network Common App Subcommittee has refreshed the Common App to improve consistency with the AIA Framework for Design Excellence and to enhance user functionality. For Chapters who currently use the Common App in their Design Awards process, we have also included a detailed change log highlighting the improvements to v2024.0. In addition, the Subcommittee has collected educational resources to support the use and/or adoption of the Common App in your chapter, including a formatted presentation to help chapters make the case to Design Committees. The latest version of the Common App and supporting resources can be found here.
The next quarterly COTE Network call will be held on Tuesday, May 7, at 2pm ET. Breakout groups will focus on supporting the continued growth and operations of COTE Chapters. The Quarterly Call will be followed by COTE Office Hours from 3:00-3:30pm ET. We hope to see you there!
Additional Resources:
For more information on the COTE Network, including registration for our quarterly calls for COTE Chapter leaders, please visit our KNet page here.
COTE Chapter Leaders contact list
Forms to update contact information (will update the database above)
Individual Volunteers Chapters
Bunny Tucker, AIA is an architect at Shape Architecture Studio in Denver and a certified Passive House designer. She serves as a co-chair of the COTE Network. Prior to architecture, she studied environmental policy and taught high school science with Teach for America. She combines her background in sustainability with her passions for educational and environmental justice to design spaces that contribute to human health, address climate change, and restore ecosystem function. As a leader within the AIA’s Committee on the Environment (COTE), she works across groups to advance a low carbon economy. She has taught comprehensive design studio at Drexel University and served on design juries at Georgia Institute of Technology and Temple University.