Early this year, we asked COTE leaders and friends -- all past COTE chairs, a handful of Advisory Group members, and some COTE collaborators -- to think back, look forward, and share thoughts. This is an edited collection of memories and hopes for the future. We are filling in some blanks in the history of COTE leadership – a long but possibly incomplete list of COTE volunteers since 1990 is here -- and we will be reaching out to more people in the coming months to gather reflections and ideas (especially as we shift our lenses in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic); we hope to represent these perspectives in posts and events in the future.
BOB BERKEBILE, FAIA / Founding Chair
My greatest hope for the future is that we make 2020 the year of perfect vision and recognize climate change -- specifically global warming -- as the existential threat that it is, and launch a cultural revolution that makes the Earth cool again.
This is the ultimate design problem and I hope our response will change human history. COTE played a key role in AIA officially moving to address the climate emergency at A’19, which has been codified since by COTE, staff, and the Board. In my opinion, this is what COTE was created for: to launch the largest, most diverse collaborative dialogue of discovery in history, to inform and accelerate designs that operate on current solar income, without releasing carbon, and to create landscapes that aggressively sequester carbon while building soil and contributing to air and water quality.
My strongest memories are tied to the birth of COTE, beginning with the birth pains relating to the AIA board and staff rejecting the idea of establishing a new committee (COTE) followed by members of the KC chapter taking a resolution (CPR: Critical Planet Rescue) to the AIA Convention in 1989 in St. Louis and the phenomenal reception and support we received from members at convention including, as I recall, strong support from five former presidents. Kirk Gastinger, FAIA, provided critical leadership during this phase.
Initially, we were assigned to the Committee on Architecture and Energy (chaired by Greg Franta, FAIA), and shortly thereafter I remember EPA committing to initial funding of $1 million to begin the research and publishing of new information in the form of the Environmental Resource Guide. We hired Joel Todd of Scientific Consulting Group to oversee our research, and she became a key partner with COTE and later USGBC. The ERG was the first to inform architects about design strategies to improve the vitality of human health and the environment. The most exciting walk I have ever had in Washington DC was from EPA headquarters to AIA headquarters that day (I’m not sure my feet touched the ground) and the most exciting conversation was talking with staff about how that research would be managed; that’s when COTE was born. COTE was announced/confirmed at AIA’s 1990 convention in Houston.
When I think about COTE’s influence, five things that top of the list as having had impact:
COTE organized national design charrettes beginning with The Greening of the White House (key leaders included Amory Lovins and Bill Browning of RMI) followed by the Greening of the Pentagon, the Greening of the National Park System and more. These charrettes launched large diverse collaborations focused on performance and the environment, and they contributed to important transformative partnerships with the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, The National Park Service, and later the General Services Agency.
Susan Maxman, FAIA, the first woman president of AIA, ran on an environmental platform, and COTE helped her plan the AIA/UIA Convention in 1993 in Chicago which was the first major conference to focus on sustainability and design.
COTE hosted the first national meeting of potential industry partners (at the request of David Gottfried and Mike Italiano) to form a broad design and construction industry organization (later named the US Green Building Council) in the AIA Board room.
After several failed attempts to add environmental performance metrics to the annual design awards program, COTE launched the Top Ten Green Projects Awards, now the COTE Top 10 Awards. This happened under Gail Lindsey’s leadership of the committee in 1997. (Gail also set a new standard for positive energy per minute/hour/meeting!) Our agreement with staff and board was that this would be an interim program that would sunset when the Committee on Design included performance metrics in the annual design awards program; my estimate at the time was five years. The COTE Top Ten Awards, now in its 24th year, now receives more attention and press than the design awards.
COTE met with Ed Mazria, the night before an AIA national panel that had been convened to hear proposals from a variety of national partner organizations that were arguing that either LEED or Green Globes should be the AIA official program, and make a recommendation to the board. The panel (which included Vivian Loftness) after hearing the presentations, recommended that both LEED and Green Globes should be improved and available to our members, and that AIA should also consider Ed’s proposal for annual measurements (now the 2030 Commitment).
DON WATSON, FAIA / Chair
I remember the work of the chair that followed me, Gail Lindsey, who made one of her goals to reach out to support COTE committees in every interested chapter; she took every opportunity to meet with local and state chapters; she understood that it couldn’t only be a centralized effort.
I hope in the near future, a President of the United States is going to ask the best and brightest of our nation, “How do we make a difference in reducing the horrific impact of climate change and severe weather catastrophes, and at that point the architectural and environmental design community will have proven answers that can be part of a world of resilient communities.
COTE has shown capacity to be part of the solution. I hope COTE keeps going and that its members and leaders remember: Every little bit counts. You cannot imagine when or where. There is no upper limit to what can be accomplished by hearts, hands, and minds devoted to rightful tasks. No voice or talent is unimportant in that endeavor.
VIVIAN LOFTNESS, FAIA / Chair
My strongest memory of COTE is that COTE is a family of national experts (much larger than the Advisory Group itself). COTE's greatest impact has been the Top Ten Awards, the measures and metrics, and the adoption of the measures and metrics as the Framework for Design Excellence (as part of AIA's climate action move). My greatest hope is that net zero becomes the new norm for all architecture; urban growth boundaries and no new land become the norm; and passive conditioning (environment surfing for light, heath, coolth, water, mobility) becomes the norm.
Next focus: We need to increase the knowledge of members (all AIA), influence academia (we are still behind; fix NAAB criteria); influence public policy (now with AIA leadership!); and influence the practice of design. We also need to get all citizens conversant with EUI, peak kW, and other Top Ten metrics. Once they can compare, they will buy and rent smart!
MARK RYLANDER, AIA / Chair
We were building momentum and inspiring colleagues to change the way they saw the built environment—proposing a new lens. My favorite memory is a period of Knowledge Community gatherings (circa 2003 to 2006) where we met kindred spirits on other Knowledge Communities, formed alliances, and learned about the culture of the systems around us, including AIA and Congress. What emerged was self-similar to how many of us came to understand buildings and communities as systems with life cycles rather than bricks with mortar.
Every relationship with colleagues seemed to branch into a network of allied efforts and affiliated organizations moving in the same general direction—DOE, EPA, SEIA, USGBC, FSC, NRDC, RMI, university research (and the teaching we featured in our funded “Ecological Literacy in Architectural Education” work), architectural firms designing great projects, colleagues acting as consultants to transform major institutions. We are not alone. COTE has served as a bridge to every organization that has something to do with greening the built environment. I also think of Gail Lindsey and Muscoe Martin, two inspiring friends with big hearts.
As always, we need to look to nature as a model in our decision making. Nature knows what to do without our involvement so let’s be part of that. We need to model a world that nine billion people can inhabit in health and peace. As Hal Levin has put it, sustainability is first and foremost about a change in consciousness.
DAN WILLIAMS, FAIA / Chair
Thinking back, I recall developing wonderful interactions with colleagues, the AIA board and administration, building professionals and academics; holding a charette on developing sustainable design retrofits for the AIA national headquarters; the introduction of ecological concepts and watershed planning into our metrics; and expanding the Top Ten measures and metrics to include urban and regional scales.
I hope that we can improve our professional understanding of the ecological systems and architectural design on a regional scale (make no small plans!). I hope we can start designing and planning at the scale larger. Systems design requires understanding the flow of energy and materials that make regions, cities and architecture sustainable. What does a continent look like when it is unplugged? And I hope we all read a book on ecology.
LANCE HOSEY, FAIA / Advisory Group member
Since 1990, COTE has led the way in the industry, continually raising the bar. Over the years, the profession has gradually tried to catch up to the vision COTE set three decades ago. Today, the best way for COTE to honor its own legacy is to stay focused on a single question: What overlooked issues today will become essential for designers a generation from now? (See the Metropolis article: A Quiet Revolution: The Origins of Sustainable Design in the United States.)
HENRY SIEGEL, FAIA / Chair
My era included transitioning AIA relationships (with USGBC and Architecture 2030, for example) from competitor to collaborator. We worked hard to gain awareness for the Top Ten program. COTE has been leading a long march to change design culture to include ecological design as elemental to good design. There is still work to do, but Top Ten is now the Framework and awards are adopting the measures and metrics, too. The Top Ten Toolkit is gaining traction and supporting firms.
Looking to the future, I hope that we can make design for climate change more central to what all architects do, while making architects more relevant, and their role more understood, and that we can move quickly toward electrification (where the grid is clean enough) and decarbonization.
BILL LEDDY, FAIA / Chair
Strong memories include presenting, in 2013, the proposal to require sustainable design metrics and narratives in all national AIA Honor Awards programs to the national AIA Board, and having it adopted unanimously. This was especially satisfying because in 2012 only 35% of the AIA Board voted in favor of the same proposal. The tide was changing. Six years later, at the passing of the Resolution for Urgent Climate Action at the national AIA conference in June 2019 -- by an overwhelming margin -- it felt like the tide had changed.
COTE has been a persistent and passionate advocate for redefining architectural excellence in the twenty-first century. There’s more work to do, but the AIA’s adoption of the Top Ten Measures as the Framework for Design Excellence is a huge testament to the hard work of every COTE member over the past 30 years.
I hope that, well before 2030, we can change building codes around the nation to require all new buildings to be zero net operational carbon. The profession and the public need COTE now more than ever. The passion and expertise of our members is critical to meeting the complex challenges of the coming decade. COTE will continue to lead through innovative design thinking, advanced educational programs and inspired policy advocacy.
NADAV MALIN, Hon. AIA / Collaborator
My strongest memories are conversations with Gail Lindsay about the “Earth Day Top Ten” back when she had just conceived of the program and was reaching out via word-of-mouth for nominations. I think that the greatest impact is more recent, as the updated (and greatly improved!) Top Ten criteria have been adapted into the Framework for Design Excellence.
I would hope that COTE can become the “advance scouting party” for AIA’s sustainability initiatives, not having to implement programs as much (because AIA as a whole is doing them), but exploring and advising on the next horizon in the field. As much as we’ve achieved in terms of advancing the practice of sustainable design, there is always so much more to do. I could see COTE providing a periodic (annual?) semi-independent assessment on how AIA as a whole is doing in fulfilling its newly clarified purpose, and helping keep the focus on the larger prize of moving the needle on climate action and sustainability.
I can also imagine COTE activities being a testing area or proving ground for initiatives that AIA’s mainstream programs aren’t yet ready for (kind of like COTE Top Ten was “incubated” within COTE before being refined and adopted by AIA as a whole. What’s the next version of that? Maybe there are a few things, of which some will fall away after further testing and others will mature and be absorbed by AIA, such as: inspiring architectural solutions leading to net-zero carbon, including materials and operations (this might happen naturally as Top Ten submissions get more sophisticated); innovative approaches to retrofitting existing buildings; designing great infrastructure solutions for the next century; envisioning community- and city-scale adaptation solutions that are also socially and ecologically beneficial; spotlighting examples of projects that succeed by bringing more diverse voices into the process.
KIRA GOULD, Allied AIA / Chair
When I was chair in 2007, COTE was in a corner. We spent a lot of time trying to describe our “measures” of design excellence and why they mattered to responsible practice. We believed that design inclusive of sustainability measures was a matter of ethical practice (recent code of ethics changes concur!) akin to the doctors’ Hippocratic oath.
I am proud that we started a student research program, that we produced a study about ecological literacy in architecture education, and that we continued to develop the Top Ten program and our ability to share its stories with the AEC community and with owners, clients, and community members. I am inspired by the recent moves that the AIA has made, especially the embrace of the Top Ten Measures as the AIA Framework of Design Excellence.
But there is much work ahead to accelerate the practice transformation -- and the transformation of our economies so they support regenerative communities. Robust dialogue in the design community -- about beauty, regeneration, carbon, and more -- is needed. What if we started to understand that design is climate action?
FILO CASTORE, AIA / Chair
When AIA adopted the COTE criteria as the Framework of Design Excellence, a felt a tear in my eye as I thought of all the advocacy and steadfast work of this group and many others. My hope for the future is that we continue to focus on creating a better world for our kids and their kids. My teenage old daughter is part of a generation that is ready to take our work and scale it. Let's make sure we empower them.
We need to continue to raise the bar within the profession of more than 100,000 architects -- and in our communities. We cannot hope to change the course only by focusing on one project at a time. I will continue to work in my community and my clients’ communities to create an environment where change happens at scale, technologies are leveraged, architects are leaders, and our voice is a beacon of pragmatic and progressive improvement.
JON PENNDORF, FAIA / Advisory Group member
AIA adopting the COTE Top Ten Measures as the Framework for Design Excellence, to me, is perhaps the greatest impact the group has had on the Institute. Mainstreaming these ideals into what the entire organization deems valuable in design is what we had hoped all those years ago.
From my time on the Advisory Group, my fondest memory is working directly with other passionate architects who wanted to give of their time and talents to foster a sustainable future. No instance made me feel more empowered than the day I spent meeting with staffers on Capitol Hill with Marsha Maytum, Angie Brooks, and Anne Schopf, speaking about the power design has to create a more sustainable future and the need to preserve critical programs at the Department of Energy.
I hope the AIA will call upon COTE and the depth of knowledge it represents to push even harder toward carbon neutrality and an equitable, resilient built environment. I also hope we start to see more carbon neutral and net positive designs that we celebrate as models for our profession and society. I believe COTE has a unique position to lead by example, assisting to educate the AIA membership on the paths to climate action in the built environment.
JIM BINKLEY, FAIA / Chair
For three decades, as AIA boards, policies and presidents changed, COTE has served as the committed, consistent and constant champion for the environment and design excellence.
I hope that in the future architects will have access to holistic, authoritative life cycle cost data that supports both the environment and design excellence, such as credible data on the complete carbon and ecological footprint of photovoltaics, including deconstruction and disposal.
JOYCE LEE, FAIA / Chair
Looking back, I must note that this has been the smartest and most dedicated group I have worked with. We saw the urgency when few saw this coming. Among the greatest impacts has been the shift in design awards and how clients view good buildings.