What makes an AIA COTE Top Ten winner? To start with, they’re innovators, either through technological advancement or through advancements within their approach, typology, client type, or region. They’re integrators, connecting systems and communities in ways that celebrate their interdependence and reveal their unique opportunities. They’re advocates, taking responsibility for effects within and beyond a site’s physical boundaries and leveraging their projects to advance the greater good. Finally, they’re synthesizers, merging design and performance to create places and spaces that ignite the soul.
At A’23, the Committee on the Environment hosted Performing Beautifully: The COTE Top Ten Awards, a session reviewing this year’s winners with commentary from jurors Avi Rajagopal and Katie Ackerly. In their opening remarks, they characterized the AIA Framework for Design Excellence as a “world-leading framework ahead of its time… one that provides a pathway of autonomy, creativity, and design within performance criteria.” They noted that this year’s winners were selected because they were exemplars of integrating across the Framework Principles, and that, as a group, the projects demonstrate different ways of creating co-benefits for both occupants and the larger community.
Casa Adelante is a 127 unit, permanently affordable housing development on a former parking lot in San Francisco. Jurors saw this project as “a sanctuary that honors the cultural history of the organization and the site” and were impressed by all it accomplished for affordable housing: low energy and water performance, exemplary indoor air quality (including improved resilience during fires), and regenerative habitat/stormwater. Notable R&D efforts, including collaborations with bee researchers and a study on the cost benefits of zero-energy, all-electric multifamily that was used to influence policies and electrification reach codes, expanded the influence and benefits of the project beyond the site itself.
Confluence Park is a former blighted industrial laydown yard that has been transformed into an educational park designed to “inspire people to gain a greater understanding of Texas ecotypes and the impact of urban development on the watershed.” As one of the country’s largest urban environmental restoration projects, jurors appreciated that the site was developed true to its natural ecology and that it made a destination out of a restored ecosystem.
DPR Sacramento Zero Net Energy Office is a renovation and CLT addition that embodies the construction firm’s commitment to sustainability and innovation. The project demonstrates zero-energy performance through renovation of a poorly performing 1940s building using commercially available products. In addition to the holistic approach to performance, the jury was particularly impressed with integration of biophilia throughout, including permanently installed art and a custom-designed seed bank of native grassland species.
Harvard University Science and Engineering Complex is a LEED Platinum, Living Future Petal Certified laboratory building designed around human health and energy performance, using innovative approaches including adaptive ventilation methods, heat recovery, air cascading, a high-performance envelope, and renewables. Implementing these new strategies and experimental technologies in a lab building was laudable, but the jury was most impressed by how this project has changed how Harvard and other higher education institutions build, particularly around healthy materials.
John W. Olver Transit Center is one of the oldest projects in the lineup, having opened in 2014. In addition to lessons on integrative and low-energy design, it offers a rich post-occupancy story that the jury found compelling. Originally conceived as zero-energy using biomass for supplemental heating, it has since installed renewables to reduce biomass demand, highlighting how the conversation has evolved in the past nine years.
RIDC Mill 19 Buildings A and B is an adaptive reuse that is meant to reflect the change coming to Pittsburgh—from the first industrial revolution to a regenerative economy. It meets its 2030 Commitment target of 80% reduction in energy use. Of particular interest is the stormwater approach: given soil contamination issues and its location along the river, the site voids infiltration, but instead collects all stormwater for treatment throughout the landscape and reuses it in a water feature, promoting evaporation instead of discharge into the river. Jurors noted how the resulting public promenade creates both infrastructure and an attractive asset for tenants.
Science and Environmental Center is an addition to a 2008 COTE Top Ten winner, the Nueva School, and presents holistic, exemplary performance across all ten Framework principles: 100% FSC certified wood, 100% energy provided by PVs, 100% stormwater reuse, ample connections to the outdoors, and the resilience demonstrated during COVID. According to the jurors, it is “fantastic across all measures.”
UC San Diego North Torrey Pines Living & Learning Neighborhood is a massive new living-learning community that uses climate-responsive design to take advantage of the San Diego microclimate to support student health and wellness and to reduce its carbon footprint. The jury was impressed by both the scale of the project and the rigor and earnestness with which the project is executed, including its anticipation of a changing climate.
Watershed is a multitenant spec office building—an underrepresented typology within the history of the COTE Top Ten Awards program. It delivers impressive energy and water performance, reduces its embodied carbon, and integrates biophilia and connections to the outdoors. The project also incorporates treatment of polluted runoff from an adjacent roadway through a series of bioswales, expanding the impact of the project to the scale of the watershed. The jury was impressed that all of this was accomplished on such a challenging typology.
Westwood Nature Center is a physical and interpretive gateway that connects visitors with the outdoors. A sensitive, nature-inspired design delivers zero-energy performance through a mixture of passive and active strategies, including an organizing thermal mass wall. The jury was impressed with the climate-responsive and elegant design, the building-integrated raptor habitat, and the surrounding regenerative landscape.
These rich projects have stories that can inspire us all. To learn more visit the 2023 Top Ten Awards page.