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, not just occupants, and demonstrates the beauty of economy and restraint.
At least one housing project has been honored annually in the past several years; this year’s winner continues to reinforce that climate justice is inseparable from social equity. Coliseum Place Affordable Family Housing, an all-electric affordable housing project in Oakland, California, integrates biophilic design and decentralized energy systems to support resident resilience, directly addressing both environmental and social vulnerability.
Two elementary schools were featured this year, including the John Lewis Elementary School in Washington, D.C., the world’s first to achieve both LEED and WELL Platinum. Designed with “Net Positive Education” as a guiding principle, the building invites students to learn from its photovoltaic canopy, peek into geothermal wells, and use dashboards to connect environmental performance with personal agency. Similarly, the Boardwalk Campus in Acton, Massachusetts is the state’s first net zero energy and water school. The project includes a new boardwalk over the site’s wetlands to create a community connection and teaching tool.
In higher education, Dartmouth’s Irving Institute for Energy and Society models how legacy infrastructure can evolve toward a zero-carbon future through sensitive renovation and high-performance additions. The Davis Center for Human Ecology at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, expresses the academic mission and institutional ethos through its use of biogenic materials and place-based design. The new building creates a campus anchor connected to both land and sea through its form, materiality, and attention to the human experience.
On the opposite coast, two education projects in Seattle were also honored. Founders Hall at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business is an excellent example of how mass timber can reduce embodied carbon while creating a biophilic experience that recollects forests of the region. And the New Upper School at The Bush School is notably the first Salmon Safe certified school in the country, using bio-infiltration planters as a teaching tool that also protect crucial habitats.
Two projects that support community non-profit organizations reinterpret the relationship between the structures, environmental conditions, and community. The Wagner Education Center at the Center for Wooden Boats integrates people into the fabric of the building as they’re invited to interact with the operable, passive systems that mediate both thermal comfort and programmatic use. Iowa’s Stanley Center for Peace and Security repurpose a former library into a global center that also serves as a community hub. Its resilience features include not only backup systems for energy and water, but food grown on site.
Finally, the Credit Human Headquarters takes its cues from the historic architecture of its San Antonio district but does so while incorporating 150 geothermal wells and an extensive water reclamation system, both dramatically reducing the use of potable water on site.
More information on each project is available on the AIA website, where you can download each project’s full submission in pdf format.
· Boardwalk Campus in Acton, MA, by Arrowstreet Inc.
· Coliseum Place Affordable Family Housing in Oakland, CA, by David Baker Architects.
· College of the Atlantic, Davis Center for Human Ecology in Bar Harbor, ME, by Susan T Rodriguez | Architecture · Design and OPAL.
· Credit Human Headquarters in San Antonio, TX, by Kirksey Architecture and Don B. McDonald Architects.
· Founders Hall, Foster School of Business, University of Washington in Seattle, WA, by LMN Architects.
· Irving Institute for Energy and Society in Hanover, NH, by Goody Clancy.
John Lewis Elementary School in Washington, DC, by Perkins Eastman DC/Perkins Eastman Architects.
· Stanley Center for Peace and Security in Muscatine, IA, by Neumann Monson Architects.
· The Bush School New Upper School in Seattle, WA by Mithun.
· Wagner Education Center at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, WA by Olson Kundig.
· The Bush School Upper New School in Seattle, WA by Mithun.
Alyssa Manypenny Murphy, AIA, LEED AP, LFA is an architect and founding Principal at Placework in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Alyssa is a former President of AIA New Hampshire and served on the Strategic Council 2022-2024. This is her first year as a member of the AIA COTE Leadership Group where she supports COTE Communications and the COTE Network.