Featuring COTE's Design Awards Subcommittee

By: COTE Co-Chairs, Danielle Fleischmann & Roshni Krishnan

AIA Philadelphia's Committee on the Environment is a band of leaders working to realize a healthy, equitable built environment. We educate designers, campaign for policy change, influence design culture, and join forces with other organizations advocating for change. We have 5 subcommittees that work to support the AIA's Climate Action Plan, the Framework for Design Excellence, Zero Waste, Environmental Justice, and the 2030 Commitment. 

Here is some more information about our subcommittees and their dedicated members!

AIA National has defined the criteria for the AIA COTE Top Ten Awards to be more broadly defined as the Framework for Design Excellence, with a focus on integrating sustainability into all considerations of design achievement and awards. Philadelphia has joined other large chapters in committing to incorporating the tenets of the Framework into its design awards criteria.

The Design Awards sub-committee is made up of COTE members interested in helping integrate these requirements into the general design awards program. We also worked with AIA Pennsylvania COTE as well, to ensure that the requirements between City and State are coordinated and complementary. In the previous years, we included sustainability information as a 5-part question sheet for brief narratives and self-scoring. We also adapted the AIA Framework into a spreadsheet with simple yes/no pull-down questions and select metrics, where applicable, prioritizing accessibility along with promoting sustainable metrics for projects submitting for Design Awards.

This committee seeks to support designers working on projects and learning about new sustainable technologies, firms using the spreadsheet to submit projects for design awards, and jurors who use the spreadsheet to assess projects submitted for awards. Please reach out if you or your firm would like a personal meeting or tutorial to review the spreadsheet or have questions about the sustainable design awards process!

Special thanks to our particularly dedicated members: Sherman Aronson, Jonathan Weiss and others! See this link for a feature written by this committee on Breaking Down the Design Awards and Framework for Design Excellence!

The Committee on the Environment is always looking for volunteers in a wide-range of capacities, and we thrive on matching your interests, skills, or professional development opportunities with our Committee's initiatives. COTE meetings are held virtually at 8:00 AM on the third Thursday of each month. Anyone interested in participating is welcome to attend! Subscribe to our Newsletter to find out more! Or follow us on our Committee page and social media accounts @aiaphillycote