If you had told me in 2020 that I would be the 2024 Chair of the AIA Committee on the Environment, I would have laughed. Not only because of the caliber of those who have held this role (most recently Julie Hiromoto, Betsy del Monte, Billie Faircloth, and Lori Ferriss) but also because I had never officially volunteered with the AIA. A single cranky email to COTE about published data on the Top Ten winners led to becoming jury chair in 2021 and a member of the COTE Leadership Group in 2022. (Lesson learned: don’t point out a problem unless you intend to be part of the solution.)
My COTE journey is just one illustration of the many ways to get involved in our community. I hope it can inspire you to engage with the COTE Network, apply for the COTE Leadership Group, or put your name in the hat to serve as a juror on our local and national awards programs—even if you’ve never done anything like it before. I promise, it’s worth it, and new voices are always welcome.
Looking toward 2024, there is so much to be excited about with COTE. Our mission remains unchanged: to empower architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. Our priorities for 2024 include:
Supporting deeper integration of the Framework for Design Excellence (and its associated metrics) within the AIA and throughout academia. We will continue to provide feedback on the Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence (CCADE) initiatives around the evolution of the Framework for Design Excellence and alignment efforts between AIA programs. 2024 brings a new COTE initiative: we are helping to shape a request for proposals and providing seed funding for an online tool that will reunite the Framework with its metrics and eventually take the place of the Super Spreadsheet and the Common Application for Design Excellence. Its potential to transform practice, provide metrics around impact, and potentially streamline awards submissions is exciting. In addition, in her second year of leading the Top Ten Student Competition workstream Robin Puttock has great plans for continuing to grow the highly successful program.
Charting the leading edge of holistic sustainability and integrating it into the policies and tools of the AIA. We’re excited to continue the evolution of the COTE Top Ten Awards program, led this year by Lyndley Kent. This program has been critical to identifying and elevating exemplars for both AIA members and for the public at large. In addition, COTE is funding a new climate action-climate justice resource, to be developed by an outside collaborator under the guidance of Ganesh Nayak and the CA/CJ team. Our communications workstream, led by Daniel Stine, will be working on telling these stories, in addition to bringing us all the news and organizing events at A’24. COTE Advocacy, led by Arathi Gowda again this year with Carlos Augusto Garcia, will continue to seek out opportunities to inform AIA policy positions and organize collective action.
Connecting the component chapters in the COTE Network to facilitate and support communications, advocacy, education, and engagement. We have a new workstream within the COTE Leadership Group, led by Daniel Jaconetti, that will focus solely on supporting the COTE Network (led in 2024 by Beth Brant, Sean Costello, and Holden Rasmussen). Daniel’s experience as the current Co-Chair, COTE/2030 Commitment for AIA Chicago will be invaluable in bridging between the Leadership Group and the grassroots-led COTE Network, and we’re excited to see how we can best provide support. Many thanks to Bunny Tucker for her service as Network leader and Leadership Group liaison in 2023.
I’m happy to announce our three new members of the Leadership Group—stay tuned for fuller profiles on each in the next issue of COTE News:
Seonhee Kim, Principal and Director of Sustainability, Design Collective
Ellen Mitchell, Principal, Director of Sustainability and Applied Research, LPA Design Studios
Joyce Raybuck, Principal, BNIM
Finally, the COTE Leadership Group also has chosen its 2025 Chair-Elect: the unstoppable Robin Puttock, who will continue to strengthen the connection between COTE and the future architects, designers, and change agents our profession needs. We are grateful to Lori Ferriss for her incredible leadership as 2023 Chair and for her continued wise counsel in the coming year.
As you can see, we have so much happening in 2024—which means there are many ways you can get involved, at both the national and local level. Reach out at cote@aia.org, or your local COTE chapter, if you have ideas or would like to lend a hand.