The 2025 COTE goals that we drafted back in January are strikingly similar to the goals I have for my students. Collaboration. Transformation. Excellence. It has been my distinct honor and privilege to lead this remarkable group of professionals this year and to amplify the voices at the local level and those in academia. As I look forward to the inspirational and astute leadership of COTE’s incoming chair, Ellen Mitchell, I would like to take a moment and reflect on what we all have achieved this season, which coincidentally, is also a practice that I try to instill in my students.
At COTE, our mission is simple: to leverage design to improve life for current and future generations. We work to enable architects, allied professionals, next generation architects and the public to see all design as climate action. Here is how we translated these goals into action in 2025:
· Collaboration: We prioritized building community, expanding partnerships and listening actively. I learned as a leader that though it may be good practice to be prepared and have a plan, it is equally valuable to be able to recognize the richness that a diversity of perspectives brings in helping the group to meet the moment together. It is through these perspectives that the COTE Network Spotlight program was created this year, due in large part to LG leader Lindsey Falasca. The Spotlight highlights programs, initiatives, and advocacy efforts led by local, regional, and state COTE groups that have made a meaningful impact in advancing sustainable design excellence. We are soliciting self-nominations now through December 31 to elevate and amplify your impactful work. Additional collaboration updates include: under LG leader Dan Stine’s leadership, COTE co-hosted a day-long symposium with the Technology and Practice (TAP) AIA Knowledge Community at AIA’25 conference and two of our LG leaders, Alyssa Murphy and Daniel Jaconetti supported the amazing efforts of our COTE Network, led by Beth Brant.
· Transformation: We focused on innovating communications and outreach, generating and disseminating knowledge and facilitating engagement and advocacy. This year we have explored impactful communication methods including COTE News, COTE book talks, social media posts, articles on AIA Architect and conference presentations including an event in the NextGen Lounge at AIA’25 with over 100 attendees who heard professionals including LG leaders Katie Ackerly, Joyce Raybuck and Alyssa Murphy share how they use the Framework for Design Excellence (F4DE) in their work. Speaking of the F4DE, COTE has also been supporting the efforts this year of the Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence (CCADE) in updating the Framework online toolkit; thank you to LG leader Seonhee Kim for representing us. We have also been busy master-planning a significant transition in the world of COTE communications as Alyssa Murphy will lead the communications team starting in 2026. We will be forever grateful to the one and only Kira Gould, LG Alum and all-around rockstar, for decades of service leading this effort. Other transformations this year include in mid-October, due in part to the 2024 leadership of Michelle Amt, we issued a request for proposals for a project which will yield three Framework for Design Excellence resources: updates to 2016’s Lessons from the Leading Edge and 2017’s The Habits of High Performance Firms, plus a third resource, Lessons from the Trenches, which will focus on successes in difficult typologies and different political climates. Please help us spread the word to folks who might be interested in working on this. In advocacy news, LG leader Joyce Raybuck supported the AIA effort to produce the Value of an Architect v1.0 in August and the first in a series of interviews with leaders from the COTE community who have successfully lobbied for important policy change: Voices of Advocacy. And last, but not least, LG leader and incoming chair, Ellen Mitchell, represented COTE in the effort to produce the Climate Justice in Architecture resource which was launched formally at AIA’25. This is a growing resource to build understanding around the different aspects of climate justice and how they can be addressed in the built environment.
· Excellence: We extended the 35-year tradition of charting the leading edge of design for climate action to help inspire, inform and motivate members in practice, the academy and allied professionals. In June, we celebrated the COTE Top Ten Winners at AIA’25 and the COTE Top Ten for Student Winners in September with the newly expanded foundation category for first and second year architecture students including those attending community colleges. It is our hope that this new initiative will not only invite wider access to the competition, but also encourage more faculty to include the Framework for Design Excellence principles into their foundation studio curricula. And I would be remiss if I did not mention perhaps the most exciting achievement this year for the COTE community and beyond: the successful launch in early October of Phase 1 of the AIA Framework Implementation Tool, the DDx, which replaces the super spreadsheet, aligns metrics and education and unites the Framework for Design Excellence with its metrics. We are so grateful to the entire team including LG leaders Lyndley Kent and Michelle Amt for their dedication to make this a reality for the 2026 awards cycle.
Wow. 2025. We were busy. We were also incredibly supported by our tireless and passionate AIA staff. I would like to speak for all of us at the COTE LG in thanking:
- Kathleen Lane (Managing Director, Climate Action & Design Excellence)
- Lisa Ferretto (Senior Director, Climate Action & Design Excellence)
- Ellie Falcon (Manager, Climate Action and Design Excellence)
I would also like to wish a fond farewell to four of our LG leaders who are cycling off this year: Michelle, Daniel, Dan and Lyndley. However, I am also happy to report that each of them have accepted roles to continue to support our community. Once a COTE leader, always a COTE leader.
And with that, I sign off. It has been a pleasure and an honor.
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 recipient of the Metropolis 2025 Planet Positive Sustainability Educator Award. Robin serves as the 2025 Chair of the National AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Leadership Group.