As I write this letter, the 2024 Paris Olympic games are winding down. Never would I have guessed that the world would debate the daily E. Coli levels of the Seine and whether the Olympic cauldron is really a cauldron. Still, it is hard not to be inspired by how Paris has hosted the Olympics—from taking full advantage of pre-existing and temporary facilities, rather than building new; to tackling those tricky Scope 3 emissions by mapping the Games material footprint and developing strategies to reduce, reuse, and return; to taking advantage of hosting the Olympics to improve both the quality of the Seine and the resilience of the city. We should expect no less from the city for which the most aggressive global compact on climate action is named.
Although I’m not a huge sports fan, I have always loved watching the Olympics. They remind us of the meaning of competition, from the Latin competere: to strive together. While it takes talent, dedication, grit and not a small amount of luck to get to the Games, training together and regularly competing against each other makes these athletes excel in ways they could not on their own.
The same holds true for those learning and those practicing architecture—we get better together. There are no better ways to hone your game than the 2025 AIA COTE Top Ten Award and the AIA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition.
2025 marks the tenth year of the AIA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition. If you don’t know about this wildly successful program, you should. The competition encourages participants to meaningfully address the future impacts of climate change, imagine and illustrate a healthy, sustainable and equitable future, and address social and environmental inequity—all through the lenses put forward by the AIA Framework for Design Excellence. The competition is open to all students (including graduate students) from any ACSA member school. This year, COTE is excited to sponsor an expansion to the program that allows participants to compete in two categories (with separate juries): Foundation Level (first-year and second-year design studios) and Upper Level (third-year or above). For more information on the 2024 winners and changes to the 2025 program, see the article by 2025 COTE chair Robin Puttock in this issue of COTE News.
The AIA COTE Top Ten for Students is important because it equips future architects with an understanding not only of the challenges we face, but also the opportunities inherent within them. In 2024, there were 1,227 students and 223 faculty participating, representing 71 schools. If you find yourself on a jury or otherwise in contact with a school of architecture, ask whether they are participating in the competition and, if not, encourage them to do so.
Here’s a secret for practicing architects: the support materials for the student competition are fantastic and contain great tools for introducing the Framework to your colleagues. Are your teams overwhelmed by the AIA’s Framework website with its questions, focus topics, directives, resources, outcomes and case studies? Take a look at the Framework Guide. Need a reading list that gives you overviews of the theories behind the strategies? Check out the Competition Guide. Want to start exploring one of the principles, but don’t know how to start? Try one of the Assignment Briefs. Thinking about developing a checklist to quickly assess a project against the Framework basics? The Criteria Checklist boils it all down to one page.
The 2025 AIA COTE Top Ten Award closes in January, and the AIA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition closes June 4, 2025. Let the AIA COTE Top Ten games begin!