Hold on to your hats, folks: 2024 is the year of big changes to the AIA COTE Top Ten program. As part of the alignment happening across AIA Awards programs, the AIA COTE Top Ten winners will no longer be announced on Earth Day, as has been tradition for past 27 years. Instead, winners will be revealed at a newly revamped Awards Gala as part of the AIA Conference on Architecture & Design in June.
This change has a cascade of effects: there will not be a conference session on the Top Ten winners (we will be working to provide Performing Beautifully as part of AIAU). The Top Ten Toast, originally created to provide a venue to celebrate the winners, will be recast as a Climate Action Networking Reception, one of six Knowledge Community events taking place within the conference venue.
To quote the indominable Keanu Reeves: Whoa.
Change is hard, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little sad about the changes. However, bringing the AIA COTE Top Ten into the main awards gala, and using the Framework for Design Excellence—originated in the Top Ten program—as the criteria for evaluating all national award winners, points to the continued success of the program. Recasting the Toast recognizes the importance of collaboration across working groups (such as 2030 Commitment, Materials Working Group, Resilience and Design Advisory Group, Disaster Assistance Committee) and Knowledge Communities to achieve climate action and climate justice. So, while I might be a little sad, I am also excited by the expanded conversations and collaborations enabled by these changes.
Recent winners of the major 2024 AIA Awards demonstrate how the AIA COTE Top Ten has changed the conversation around design, responsibility, and impact:
- Whitney Award: Douglas Ito, FAIA. Ito provides us with a holistic model of activism at all scales. As a practitioner, he demonstrates the power of design to transform communities, generate positive social impact, and support the needs of marginalized groups through his work in affordable housing. As a citizen, he continues to advocate on behalf of the underrepresented to recraft Seattle’s affordable housing levy. As a firm leader, he works to diversify design teams to reflect the clients they work for and supports initiatives to diversify the profession. Ito’s work to confront racial, social, and political injustice demonstrates the positive impact we can all have and embodies Design for Equitable Communities in both practice and projects.
- Gold Medal: David Lake & Ted Flato. I am thrilled to see Lake and Flato receive the Gold Medal, as their portfolio exemplifies the integration of design and performance—beautifully. It is obvious that they are values-aligned with COTE: they hold the record with 15 AIA COTE Top Ten Awards (!), most recently for Confluence Park in 2023. Lake and Flato have long advocated for, and demonstrated, an architecture “rooted in a particular place, responding in a meaningful way to the natural or built environment, using local materials and partnering with the best local craftsmen…to create buildings that are tactile and modern, environmentally responsible and authentic, artful and crafted.” Their practice and their projects epitomize Design for Integration: of building and landscape, of science and art, of communities and ecosystems, of vision and execution, and of life and work.
- Edward Kemper Award: Sho-Ping Chin. Our profession is still experiencing the positive impacts of Chin’s work almost a decade after her death. She was a tireless champion for the power of design in healthcare at Payette (another frequent AIA COTE Top Ten winner) rooted in “meeting human needs with a blend of compassion, technology, and a deep respect for nature and the built environment.” Chin also founded the Boston Society of Architect’s Women Principals Group, which later evolved under her leadership into the AIA Women’s Leadership Summit, now an annual occurrence. While her project work embodies many of the principles within the Framework for Design Excellence, her tireless advocacy for the next generation of professionals is one we can all learn from and be inspired by.
- Firm Award: Quinn Evans. By connecting the dots between preservation, sustainability, and social empowerment, Quinn Evans has helped drive the conversation around existing building reuse. The oft-quoted phrase “the greenest building is one that is already built” was coined by Principal Emeritus (and 2018 AIA President) Carl Elefante. Their work reveals untold histories in the buildings and communities in which they work, and they advance climate action and justice through both design and advocacy.
Regardless of when they are announced and how they are celebrated, both the AIA COTE Top Ten Award and the AIA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition remain fundamental to COTE’s mission because they serve two purposes: to teach about sustainability—providing tools and metrics that can inform all projects, not just those submitting for awards—and to elevate exemplars that we can all learn from. I’ll see you in Washington DC in June!