At the top of this month, the AIA Conference on Architecture and Design convened over 13,000 attendees in Washington, D.C. for the first time since 2012. Architects and designers and everyone in between flocked Conference sessions on materials health, sustainability & resilience, the role of specifications and manufacturers, and the Expo Floor boasted over 500 companies, many bearing the green buttons “Ask me about sustainability” and “Ask me about materials.” Since it was launched in 2018, the AIA A&D Materials Pledge and its Working Group has been hard at work developing the program’s structure and reporting metrics. The program was excited to gather the Materials community at AIA24, with highlights being the second annual Materials Open Forum and Conference sessions led by our members and organizational partners. Below are boots-on-the-ground snippets from our Materials Pledge Working Group staff and members who were able to attend, lead, and continue important conversations about the industry’s progress to a more holistic materials specification.
A&D Materials Pledge Open Forum, Misha Semenov-Leiva
Conference attendees this year were invited to attend an open forum session dedicated to the Materials Pledge. After getting a sneak preview of the new reporting framework launching this year, attendees broke into small discussion groups to discuss their goals, intentions, and challenges around reporting on their firms’ sustainable materials selections. The initial discussion focused on the integration of responsible materials selections and the pledge framework into firm culture; participants shared ways they have built better materials into their workflow and discussed the databases and libraries they use to share and document best practices. The second part of the discussion zeroed in on project-level materials vetting and reporting. One thing was very clear from the discussions: architects want to do the right thing, but often feel they are missing clear guidance that can be built into their projects without the need for extensive research and bespoke spreadsheets. The new Materials Pledge project reporting framework will hopefully begin to address this need by helping architects prioritize the most significant materials and impact categories.
Building Alignment: The Role of Project Certifications to Drive Impact, Melissa Morancy
In a session of powerhouse organizations, USGBC, ILFI, IWBI, mindfulMaterials and AIA, talking about how they are aligning to propel sustainable materials forward in the building space. Using based on the 5 impact categories created by AIA, the Common Materials Framework has been expanded to include a framework for creating a common language by the AEC community by mindfulMaterials. The organizations talked about how they plan to integrate this common language into their current and future work, including LEEDv5, Declare, Living Product Challenge, WELL and the AIA A&D Materials Pledge program.