Blogs

July 2025 AIA Corporate Partners COTE Newsletter Article: GAF Roofing

By Ellie Falcon posted 11 days ago
Strategies to avoid losing sustainability goals to budget considerations World Trade, Boston, MA pursued SITES, LEED and WELL certifications using a durable yet traditional roof assembly. You’ve likely heard this before: Your building owner wants to go green, dreams of net-zero or carbon neutral. Then, the price tag shows up, those dreams vanish, and the owner gives up their sustainability priorities to save money today at the expense of tomorrow. While sustainable design means something slightly different to every designer and building owner, one thing often remains the same: Sustainability often gets labeled "too expensive." In commercial ...

Climate Action Advocacy + Government Affairs

By Lisa M. Ferretto AIA posted 14 days ago
Take Action with AIA 179D under threat in the Senate Direct link to ACT NOW Link to GAF Post Full List of Actions to take with AIA Running list to Safeguard tools & data (COTE) Email cote@aia.org with any new additions Links to AIA Government Affairs Forum (GAF) Resource Library Newsletter Survey - Spring into action campaign Other links: USGBC’s Local Green Building Policy Accelerator (Jul + Aug) past posts/ discussions § Comment on NZERB definition + submit ...

COTE Network Update

By Sean Costello AIA posted 29 days ago
It’s been a vibrant and inspiring summer, marked by the AIA National Conference and a range of impactful events throughout the past month. The COTE Network also hosted a lively and thought-provoking Q2 call on May 13th, bringing together voices from across our community. Missed the discussion? No worries—you can catch up anytime. The full recording and presentation slides are available in our archive. At AIA National, the COTE Network had an exciting opportunity to participate in a curated networking session, where the Committee on the Environment hosted the COTE Open Forum. COTE Chair Robin Puttock led a dynamic conversation featuring the two most recent ...

Take Action: Contact Senators: Protect Clean Energy Tax Credits, good for communities and businesses

By Kira L. Gould Hon. AIA posted 30 days ago
Here's another way to TAKE ACTION to support healthy communities, clean energy, and thriving economies: If you care about clean energy, it’s urgent you contact your senators. Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget will gut the clean energy economy and clean energy tax credit, while adding $2.4 Trillion to the deficit . Over the past three years, companies have announced plans to invest more than $843 billion in clean energy projects, driven by tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act. The budget being considered by the Senate will eliminate those tax credits. Please call and email your senators as soon as possible. Ask your friends and family to do the same. ...

Congratulations to the 2025 COTE Top Ten Award winners!

By Alyssa M. Murphy AIA posted 06-10-2025
The COTE community is celebrating this year’s Top Ten Awards, announced at the AIA Awards Gala in Boston on June 5. For more than 25 years, the Top Ten has become synonymous with the highest achievement in sustainable design excellence. Once focused on highlighting specific aspects of achievement, it’s clear that the principle of integration sets these projects apart. This year’s Top Ten all demonstrate a systems-thinking mindset; each is a strategic intervention integrated into its community in a way that invites broader conversations—about education, equity, infrastructure, and adaptation. The buildings’ architecture activates its users as participants, ...

Letter from the Chair: July / August 2025

By Robin Leigh Ziegenbalg Puttock AIA posted 06-09-2025
Just as I started to plan this chair letter, reflecting on the incredibly intense past four days of the AIA’25 Conference in Boston , I was contacted by a reporter who wanted my response to the following question: “How do you regard the overarching conference message about ‘opportunity’ in light of the general session themes – AI is a threat, infrastructure is a problem, and architects struggle to tell their stories?” As all seasoned multi-taskers do, I decided to address both tasks with a single deliverable. Here goes… For those following my chair letters so far in 2025, I often speak about collaboration. In particular, how collaboration done well can ...

Why Architects Should Speak Up to Protect ENERGY STAR

By Lindsey R. Falasca posted 06-09-2025
Click here to quickly contact your legislators and urge them to protect ENERGY STAR before Congress passes the FY2026 budget. As architects, our job is to design buildings that serve people and endure over time. Increasingly, that means ensuring our work is not only functional and beautiful, but also efficient, resilient, and climate-conscious. One of the most trusted tools in that mission is now under threat: the U.S. EPA’s ENERGY STAR program. The Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 budget would eliminate funding for ENERGY STAR —an alarming move that’s drawn strong opposition from across the building industry. And rightly so. For over ...

Growing a Culture of Design Excellence at UTSA

By Kate Sector Assoc. AIA posted 06-09-2025
Growing a Culture of Design Excellence at UTSA Three years ago, I pitched an idea to the Assistant Director of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) , John Bagarozy: What if we could introduce the AIA Framework for Design Excellence earlier—through an in-house design competition—before students were eligible for the national COTE Top Ten for Students? That seed has grown into a recurring, student-centered competition that is shaping how future architects think about sustainability, equity, and impact. Now in its third year, the UTSA Student COTE Competition offers a replicable model for other schools ...

Perspective: Energy Star’s Roots – the Foundation of the Green Building Movement

By Peter L. Pfeiffer FAIA posted 06-05-2025
Perspective: Energy Star’s roots – the Foundation of the Green Building Movement - Peter L Pfeiffer , FAIA The hallowed US Federal energy conservation program, known as Energy Star , has been in the news lately. It is being attacked , falling victim to the label of being an outdated government program that is no longer relevant. How did this happen? Where did it come from anyway? Let’s discuss its roots and see what that has to do with the present-day green or sustainability movement. More than four decades ago, in the early 1980s, the City of Austin wrestled with the question of investing in ...

Citizen Architect (Just Do It)

By Kjell M. Anderson FAIA posted 06-05-2025
As a member of a State Building Code Council , I see directly how Architects can provide pragmatic insights that shape policy. Architects understand how buildings and cities are designed to make people’s lives healthier and better. Our knowledge of zoning codes through site selection, financing, design, construction, and renovation mean we understand the impediments and opportunities for cities and towns to foster connections, mobility, increase housing, and support economic activity. Our broad view of the built environment, as leaders of design teams, mean that we are visionaries that understand potential futures that others are not trained to do. Architects ...

BOOK REVIEW The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook

By TIMOTHY Beatley posted 06-02-2025
BOOK REVIEW The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook By Timothy Beatley It is undoubtedly true, as the authors of this important book argue, that urban design (and planning) today play an outsize role in addressing the intersecting challenges of climate change, resource management (water, energy, land), and conservation of biodiversity. The authors are Nico Larco, a University of Oregon professor who also practices through ELEMENT/Urban Design, and Kaarin Knudson, who also teaches at the U of O and is currently serving as Mayor of Eugene. The pair has written an enormously useful and badly needed handbook to help guide and support those working to design ...

COTE Network Update - Q2 Call

By Sean Costello AIA posted 05-13-2025
Thank you to everyone who joined the COTE Q2 Call on May 13th! We had an engaging and insightful discussion centered around the important work that COTE local and state groups are doing every day. Your contributions and shared experiences continue to help shape and strengthen our communities. During the call, we explored several key topics, including: Advocacy Day of Service Regional Conferences Educational Series Carbon Series If you weren’t able to join us live—or if you’d like to revisit the conversation—you can access the recording here: Link A Special Thank You to Our Breakout Session Leaders! ...

apply to join the COTE Leadership Group & more

By Kira L. Gould Hon. AIA posted 04-17-2025
JOIN COTE: Apply this spring/summer ror the national Leadership Group If you have been in the COTE community for a while, or are new to our tent, perhaps it’s time to think about applying to the national Leadership Group of COTE, an AIA Knowledge Community (since 1990). What does the COTE Leadership Group do? This group of a dozen people shape and shepherd COTE’s flagship programs, the COTE Top Ten Awards and the AIA/ACSA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition … as well as guiding knowledge development, collaborating with other climate groups at AIA (2030 Working Group, materials groups, the Resilience and Adaptation Group, and more). ...

May 2025 AIA Corporate Partners COTE Newsletter Article: Andersen Windows & Doors

By Ellie Falcon posted 04-16-2025
Climate-responsive, affordable design: A case study In 2024, there were 27 $1 billion weather events in the United States, so designing with climate in mind is more of an imperative than ever before. A new home in Austin, Texas makes a perfect case study in how to do this. Barley | Pfeiffer Architecture doesn’t describe their homes as “sustainable.” Instead, they favor “climate responsive.” The reason? “Climate-responsive homes are inherently sustainable but not every sustainable home is climate responsive,” said Peter L. Pfieffer, FAIA, principal. Their focus is on designing homes that reduce energy demand by accounting for real-world conditions. ...

Letter from the Chair: May/June 2025

By Robin Leigh Ziegenbalg Puttock AIA posted 04-13-2025
As an architecture professor and practitioner, collaboration is part of my daily routine. I invite interdisciplinary experts into my classes just as I invited them to be a part of my design teams. If you follow me on LinkedIn , you will see that this year, I hosted commissioning agents and mechanical engineers in my 5 th year workforce housing studio and just a couple weeks ago, I hosted social workers, nurses and psychologists in my well-being thesis studio. The written and verbal reflections of the guests and students after these workshops revealed a truth. None of us know it all, but together, we can sure learn a lot. As highlighted in my last chair letter, ...

Stronger Together: Collaborative Advocacy

By Joyce A. Raybuck AIA posted 04-13-2025
After dismantling federal climate and energy policies, the current administration is moving on to state and local levels with the release of an Executive Order that attempts to eradicate state decarbonization efforts. As noted in a recent New York Times article, Gina McCarthy the former Administrator of the EPA said, “I think one of the reasons you see him going after states is that they are the final line of defense.” [1] In states where there are not strong climate policies, certain state governments are restricting cities from addressing concerns. Where I currently reside in Missouri (a home rule state) the State Legislature is, at this writing, ...

Toward a Carbon Neutral Corridor - AIA Upjohn Sponsored Research by archimania

By Daniel J. Stine AIA posted 04-11-2025
Toward a Carbon Neutral Corridor is an AIA Upjohn Research Initiative project that ambitiously explores how aging, auto-oriented commercial corridors in Middle America can be reimagined as vibrant, low-carbon, and socially resilient districts. Spearheaded by archimania , in collaboration with Transsolar - KlimaEngineering , the research builds upon the firm’s own South Cooper Street studio—the first adaptive reuse project certified as both Zero Energy and Zero Carbon by the International Living Future Institute, which also won a 2022 AIA COTE Top Ten award . This project delivers a set of layered toolkits designed for architects, ...

COTE Network Update

By Sean Costello AIA posted 04-10-2025
The Cote Network is excited to share an upcoming event If you are planning to attend the AIA National Conference this year in Boston! We hope that you can join us for a lively session of "curated networking" as the Committee on the Environment (COTE) hosts an open Forum. This will occur on Thursday, June 5 th at 11 am. COTE Chair Robin Puttock, the two past winners of the COTE Top Ten for Students Competition, and longtime industry leader and educator Barbra BatShalom will share remarks and engage in a great conversation! We hope to see everyone there! If you missed the Q1 COTE network call, don’t worry, you can find the recording and slides in our archive ...

Spotlight on Sustainability: Celebrating the Achievements of Local and State COTE Groups

By Lindsey R. Falasca posted 04-10-2025
This Earth Day, we’re proud to spotlight a selection of educational and advocacy initiatives from COTE groups at AIA state and local chapters that are making a tangible difference in their regions—proving that climate leadership starts at the local level. Architects and designers across the country are stepping up through their local networks—driving real change where it matters most: in their communities. The AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Network is a powerful force for environmental stewardship in architecture, with more than 60 local and state groups mobilizing around sustainable design, community resilience, and climate action. Educational ...

New Course Early ACCESS: April 1–23 Only

By Ellie Falcon posted 04-09-2025
Be among the first to experience AIAU's groundbreaking Design for Decarbonization series with free access to the inaugural course, The Built Environment's Carbon Challenge —for a limited time. This exclusive opportunity ends after April 22 (Earth Day). After this date the course returns to regular pricing as part of our premium series. Course Link: https://aiau.aia.org/course/details/the-built-environments-carbon-challenge Promo Code: EARTHDAY2025 Please share with colleagues to amplify our industry's climate impact!