My Letter to the AIA

I just sent this to the feedback@aia.org e-mail, listed in their recent outreach to members. I encourage you to add your voice to strengthen sustainability, social justice and other tenets of a civilized and forward-thinking society.

Mr. Ivy,

First, I want to thank you for responding so quickly to the inputs from AIA members. I, too, felt your message about infrastructure work (see below), though likely well intended, did little to reinforce inclusion, sustainability or our ethical obligation as professionals with extensive training and experience. Your recent letter went a long way to remedying that.

UPDATED: AIA pledges to work with Donald Trump, membership recoils

I am, however, concerned about the profession of architecture for a couple of reasons, and I hope you will take the time to understand these concerns. For some background, I have known I would be an architect since the age of nine. I don’t know why, I just knew. My education at RPI was fraught with struggle as I wanted to be part of my community even while studying, and the school implied I was not serious and would never be an architect because of that need to engage in President’s Advisory Committees, Student Orientation crew, and Theatre. I am an architect who has always felt one cannot design purely from without, looking in. Through my career, I have tried to move toward more sustainable goals with every bit of work, to the point that I was selected to be NYS Government’s first Director of Sustainability, for a NYS Authority. I am not designing, now, and I miss it, but I am affecting policy, greening the work for hundreds of millions of dollars of projects statewide, and greening the business of this state entity as well as instigating and supporting collaborations between state entities on a wide variety of greening work. I have been an active AIA COTE member, though not recently, and led the AIA ENY COTE for four years. This ended in 2010 or so, due to a lack of regard, at that time, for sustainability in that group as a whole.

AIA has made some clear commitments, but I have not seen them translated into the work of architects except by virtue of those architect’s own personal intents. You have written “discussing” sustainability with our clients into the ethics of the AIA, but there is no clarity that climate science is real and we have a need, in every project, to reduce and soon eliminate fossil fuel use. If our buildings cease to need fossil fuels, perhaps we could stop investing in foolish, short-term, environmentally damaging pipelines and other mining infrastructure. If we could build roads and city center projects and libraries and hospitals and homes with less embodied-carbon intensive materials, we would be solving real problems.

I ask you to please strengthen this core principle not just in words but in action.

• One idea toward that end would include highlighting and rewarding firms achieving net zero energy buildings and absolutely refusing to feature any buildings that only meet code for energy performance. We can consider no building beautiful or worthy of design achievement awards unless it is exemplary in at least energy performance. As professionals with a cornerstone principle of sustainability we must hold ourselves to this higher standard.
• Another idea is to require every project to define the target EUI. If this were part of contract required discussions and process the teams would be put on task for discussing energy, out of the gate. Regardless of the set target, the early discussion would be a game changer.
• One more idea is to make energy a focus of CEU for licensing maintenance. If each state office of licensure would require 3-5 units about energy, we, as architects, would learn what it means to design with our engineering colleagues and we would have more tools and knowledge to make buildings that maximize the synergies between their systems, especially envelope with mechanical inputs and controls. There are still architects out there who leave 10% of the floor plan for the MEP team to work with, and call that design!

A larger issue, and one I do not know how to solve, but would be willing to explore further, is the need in the standard contracts to protect ourselves which unfortunately often translates into a detriment to integrative design practices. We are in society of blamers and lawyers, I understand that, and it is even more evident throughout this election and end months of the Obama Whitehouse. We need to be better. How can we protect our licenses AND maximize the team building and early collaborations we need in order to build well? Notice I do not say build “green” as I would argue that so many buildings by even the most prominent and known architects have not been as well designed as they could be because of the foolish divisions between the professions of architecture and…everyone else. In a perfect world we would also bridge better between the contractors and design team, and some approaches are starting to do that. I do appreciate your stance on Design-Build needing to be architect-led, for example, which helps bring construction knowledge and cost controls into the planning, but protects our professional obligations to the HSW of the building users. But let’s focus more on finding and implementing improvements in the A+E business relationships including civil (and landscape design and interior design). I believe there is an AIA contract framework that includes Integrative Design Process, but why is it an option instead of the basic approach? More softly, why is it not more prominent?

I respect the intent of the AIA to protect the profession, and feel that the only way to truly protect our work is to lift it higher, re-engage with a broader team of knowledge bringers, and reinforce a bit of the generalist so that we understand, sort of as Master Builders of old, the work we complete. I am pleased with the direction I have seen under your leadership and hope this goal, of reinforcing the core principles mentioned in your letter of November 17^th, is not only stated but worked on in every way possible in order to achieve traction and success. I would like the cornerstone of sustainability, in particular, to be translated through the training, professional guidance documents, legal construct and celebrations of the AIA in order to make this real and not just a stone with a date on it, stagnant and left only to be occasionally pointed at.

Please let me know if I can be of assistance, or if you have questions about my concerns and my goals for the profession,

Jodi Smits Anderson, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Director Sustainability Programs, DASNY