Just as I started to plan this chair letter, reflecting on the incredibly intense past four days of the AIA’25 Conference in Boston, I was contacted by a reporter who wanted my response to the following question: “How do you regard the overarching conference message about ‘opportunity’ in light of the general session themes – AI is a threat, infrastructure is a problem, and architects struggle to tell their stories?”
As all seasoned multi-taskers do, I decided to address both tasks with a single deliverable. Here goes…
For those following my chair letters so far in 2025, I often speak about collaboration. In particular, how collaboration done well can lead to identifying specific, unique barriers, understanding related, successful work-arounds already in existence, and translating them into your own efficient and effective solutions. In the many diverse collaborative contexts during the conference, I saw this pattern over and over again. I experienced it during a quick chat at an Open Studio event, while taking table discussion notes at the COTE Open Forum, through moderating the vibrant, informative presentations of five firm leaders in the Next Gen Lounge Framework Event on the expo floor, and finally, during the very dynamic, agenda-deviating COTE Leadership Group (LG) in-person meeting conversation.
At Payette’s Open Studio, Kevin Sullivan, the President and CEO, described OpenLAB, Payette’s innovative collaboration that unites a professional studio with an academic studio. He spoke of the barriers, the work-arounds and the culminating solution of OpenLAB. Having just released an edited volume about diverse pedagogies, I was fascinated by this approach and started to think of ways that I could help amplify it, in an effort to provide opportunities for other firms to create similar symbiotic professional studio crossovers.
The following day, at the COTE Open Forum, we focused on fostering the connection between practice and education, demonstrating how to be intentional in these collaborations. After the speaker presentations, I participated in the academic table discussions, now in their second year, identifying the barriers to teaching the Framework for Design Excellence (F4DE), in curricula across the country and revealing several strategies currently in use. Last year, these discussions generated the idea of a new category for the highly popular AIA/ACSA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition: a foundation level open to first and second year students, including community college students. This category launched a couple of weeks after last year’s conference and I am thrilled to report that the entries for this new category contributed to 10% of the overall competition entries – what a fantastic opportunity for a whole new population of students to get involved with design excellence. Stay tuned for what the table discussions revealed this year…
On Friday, immediately following Pete Buttigieg’s inspiring keynote, we gathered on the expo floor for the Next Gen Lounge Framework Event (photo above). Fresh from the impact of Pete’s statements like, “salvation comes from the local level”, “architects create spaces for interaction” and my personal favorite: “architects are the stewards of the overlapping spaces”, five firm leaders: Joyce Raybuck (BNIM), Katie Ackerly (David Baker Architects), Miguel Elizardo (Lake Flato), Alyssa Murphy (Placework) and Ozzie Tapia (LPA), each shared how they used the flexible F4DE, each working to overcome unique barriers using a variety strategies. This group of presenters represent excellence in many ways: Firm Award and COTE Top Ten project award winners, as well as a diversity of perspectives: coast to coast, small to large firm sizes, and multiple project types. The event transitioned into many one-on-one conversations including a high school junior who was now considering architecture as a profession and a CEO of a 150-person firm who wanted to start using the Framework not only to support design excellence but also to be part of a firm-wide strategy to strengthen employee retention. These conversations resonated with me because they were clear opportunities that were created through the identification of barriers and explanations of possible workarounds.
And finally, soon after the F4DE Event, the COTE LG met for our annual in-person meeting. This year, as chair, I spent weeks meticulously planning and inviting several LG members to do preliminary work before the meeting in order to be most effective with our limited time together. My goal was for each of us to do the collaboration sessions outside of the meeting, identifying the barriers and workarounds, so that we could spend the in-person time formulating solutions moving forward. This preparation was valuable; however, the meeting quickly took on a life of its own, fueled by this highly talented and diverse group of people, and we realized that before moving forward into the action items, we needed to spend time digging deeper into the barriers and workarounds presented by each individual, and now as a group, and from our own unique perspectives. I have no doubt that this collaboration exercise will soon yield actionable solutions; however, I learned yet again, in a different context, it is critical that before creating opportunities, we all first need to understand the conditions from a wide variety of viewpoints.
So, in response to the question above, “How do you regard the overarching conference message about ‘opportunity’ in light of the general session themes – AI is a threat, infrastructure is a problem, and architects struggle to tell their stories?”, I offer this: The overarching conference message about opportunity can only be efficiently received and shared as solutions after we identify and understand the current conditions from many different perspectives.
Robin Z. Puttock, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, is an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University and a practicing architect with over twenty years of professional, national award-winning, sustainable design experience. She is the editor and contributing author of Teaching Carbon Neutral Design in North America: Twenty Award-Winning Architectural Design Studio Methodologies (Routledge 2025) and is the project architect of many LEED certified buildings as well as the first US Department of Education Green Ribbon School recognized by President Barack Obama. Robin serves as the 2025 Chair of the National AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Leadership Group.