By Bunny Tucker, AIA
The COTE Network is excited to share two updated resources for local and state chapters: the 2023 COTE Chapter Guide and version 2023.0 of the Common App for Design Excellence. The 2023 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 2023 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 intent was to 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 six months, 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 v2023.0. 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: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DH47RHbc8nQXjuRuAhOUtOVLdCsvaTyD?usp=share_link
The next quarterly COTE Network call will be held on Tuesday, February 7, at 2pm Eastern time. We hope to see you there! To get more information, including the Zoom link, if you are not already on the invitation, email cote@aia.org.
Bunny Tucker, AIA is an architect at Shape Architecture Studio in Denver. She serves as a co-chair of the COTE Network and liaison to the AIA COTE Leadership Group. 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.