Committee on the Environment

By Carl Elefante, FAIA, 2018 AIA President

AIA COTE^® Colleagues,

While I’m not with you in Chicago, I’m very much with you in spirit. The desire to elevate sustainability, green building and climate change is what motivated me to give three years to AIA pursuing and serving as President.

I believe 2018 will be noted as the year architects recognized that it is up to us to address the intractable issues confronting our communities.

Thanks for all the things you are doing in your practices, through AIA COTE^®, and in partnership with other sustainability and green building supporters like USGBC. Your commitment and amazing architecture give me great hope.

It’s been a full and eventful year for AIA. Here are a few notable activities from 2018.

• AIA COTE^® Advocacy: COTE^®’s advocacy interests have taken advocacy at AIA to a new level. Great work COTE^®!
• AIA Code of Ethics: Thanks mostly to COTE^® New England, Nadav Malin, Mike Davis, and others, the AIA Code of Ethics was improved this year with much clearer and compelling provisions in Canon VI.
• AIA COTE^® Toolkit: The Toolkit was an important point of reference at KLA last summer (as we sought to help all Knowledge Communities realize connections to the New Urban Agenda and Paris Agreement). I look forward to seeing this tool launch and its growth and evolution.
• Manufacturers Council: AIA has organized a “curated” council of building product manufacturers to develop meaningful engagement beyond “transactional” relationships. I’m optimistic about this opportunity. One of the topics I raised with this council is how AIA members and manufacturers can address embodied carbon.
• Global Climate Action Summit: AIA sent a delegation to the GCAS in September. It instilled a much-heightened sense of urgency in everyone who participated. I have proposed the AIA Climate Action Committee, a of the AIA Strategic Council. This has been developed with lots of help from those who attended the GCAS. We’re going to focus on creating a climate-change purpose to everything AIA does. Exponential progress is a requirement.
• AIA Public Outreach / Blueprint for Better: The B4B campaign is a multi-year commitment to helping architects become “civic leaders”. It targets the 2020 election cycle so everyone will know where AIA stands on key issues. See the Where We Stand Statement for likely key issues.

I believe 2018 will be noted as the year architects recognized that it is up to us to address the intractable issues confronting our communities. Working closely with our mayors and other civic leaders, we have confidence in our ability to make the world a better place and our willingness to get outside our comfort zone to make improvement happen.

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Carl Elefante, FAIA
2018 AIA President