The AIA 2030 Commitment is thrilled to be participating in the COTE Open Forum at the A’18 Conference, set for Friday, June 22 from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. As the 2030 Working Group Co-Chair, I will be focusing on the benefits of collaborating with fellow 2030 signatories through regional groups, such as those currently active in Boston, California’s Central Coast, Chicago, and Seattle. (Another 14 local chapters have identified 2030 interest groups in their region as well). I will be joined by several regional group members to discuss how starting or strengthening a local group can help to effectively: share resources and solutions to common challenges, and collaborate to advance sound policy.
Chris Hellstern, Living Building Challenge Services Director at The Miller Hull Partnership, shares a closer look at Seattle’s experience: In 2009, a group of architects passionate about sustainability and energy efficiency convened a gathering of like-minded experts over lunch. The goal? To openly share our successes and challenges of pursuing the newly released AIA 2030 Commitment. As new signatories, we were not yet sure how to accomplish the goals. However, we did know that those working for positive environmental change were usually willing to share their efforts to help the greater cause.
We started out simply—discussing the logistics of filling out the project spreadsheet and encouraging project teams to actually report energy data—but quickly realized that our environmentally progressive and expert membership had the opportunity and interest to focus on even bigger changes.
Supported by stakeholder members like the City of Seattle and Architecture 2030, our efforts have included helping create Seattle city zoning incentives for energy efficient features in buildings, proposing language for both the Seattle and Washington State energy codes and drafting language for the Seattle Living Building Challenge Pilot Program. We’ve advocated improvements to annual 2030 reporting methods, and served as beta testers in the transition from spreadsheets to the 2030 Design Data Exchange (DDx). We’ve also hosted numerous community events, including town halls with local developers, architects, and engineers, in an effort to bring all project stakeholders to the table.
Today, more than eight years and one hundred monthly meetings later, through job changes, the ebb and flow of regular meeting attendance, and the explosive growth of our city, we still gather to work together. Each year, we’ve shared our reporting data among all our member firms, gaining insight from one another even as competitors. We’ve seen years with tens of millions of square feet of projects to periods of incremental energy reduction during the recession. Regardless, at every step, we learned together in our mutual goal of advancing energy reduction and climate change mitigation.
Those of us who work in support of sustainability know it can sometimes be a lonely and discouraging labor of love. But when we work together and share our experiences across competitive boundaries, we are renewed in our commitments and the joy of what we do.