Last fall, the AIA Adopted the Architecture & Design Materials Pledge that addresses aspirations for holistically sustainable materials that support human health, climate health, ecosystem health, social health and equity, and a circular economy. To date, 114 companies have signed on to pledge support. You can review the details and sign on to the A&D Materials Pledge here. Lona Rerick, AIA, the chair of the AIA Materials Knowledge Working Group (MKWG) in 2018 and an integral member of the development team explained the pledge “sets a clear direction for the transformation of building design process and the materials that we use to create architecture.”
AIA member and client surveys reinforce the critical responsibility architects have selecting materials. Finding durable, affordable materials that function well, are easily maintained, and look great can be a challenge. Adding criteria relating to environmental, health and equity impacts to the mix does not make it easier. But material selection is critical to our work, materials are the medium with which we create.
The AIA’s MKWG was one of four AIA committees founded after Mary Ann Lazarus, FAIA, completed her Sustainability Leadership Opportunity Scan for the AIA. In its initial years, the group worked on creating a policy statement for the AIA to adopt, developing education and resources for Architects, and advocating across the industry for better material selections.
Understanding the health and environmental impacts of building materials has been a growing topic in sustainability circles for over ten years. In 2012, many Architects started writing letters to the manufacturing community, asking manufacturers to stand up for transparency and provide information about the health and environmental impacts of their products. Some parts of the manufacturing community took notice and began issuing transparency disclosures like Health Product Declarations (HPDs), Environmental Product Declarationsv (EPDs), Declare Labels, Cradle to Cradle certifications, and other certifications. A group of motivated manufacturers was formed calling themselves the ILFI Living Product 50 (LP50). They wrote a letter back to the Architects in 2018 basically saying “We created the transparency documents for our building materials that you asked for, why aren’t we seeing Architects using these products in greater numbers?”
Poised with a new, long-term vision of truly sustainable materials developed in 2017, the AIA MKWG introduced the well-defined “pledge”. The pledge’s five holistic statements are intended to simplify the difficult challenge of material selection and market transformation Architects and Manufacturers seek to achieve. It was modeled on the Architecture 2030 Challenge (a set of aspirational statements) and the AIA 2030 commitment (a metrics reporting system to track progress on these aspirations). Together, the 2030 Challenge and Commitment promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in building operations while providing a framework to track industry progress and achieve the goal of zero emissions by 2030.
The materials pledge was introduced with 56 signatures during an ILFI summit between the architecture and design community and the manufacturing community in April 2019. It continued to gain traction and by October 2020, when the AIA Board of Directors adopted it as the Architecture & Design Materials Pledge, another 34 companies had joined. Ralph Bicknese, AIA, 2020-21 Chair of the MKWG notes that “adoption of the pledge by the AIA opens the door for the AIA to direct resources to moving the pledge forward.”
The AIA is building support for the pledge in a variety of ways. The AIA MKWG has already created education called the Materials Matter series, available via AIAU. AIAU also recently published the Boston Society of Architects’ Embodied Carbon 101 series. The AIA is developing recommendations on steps forward to help firms make progress on incorporating better materials throughout their practice and is developing benchmarking metrics to allow Architects and Designers to better track materials being used.
Material selection will continue to be a challenge for architects. But the goal is to provide guidance to the industry and solid, actionable resources to assist in the difficult decision-making processes involved in this process.