Last week, I attended and presented at the national American Institute of Architects 2024 Conference on Architecture in Washington DC. It was a whirlwind event ranging from Lake|Flato's founding partners receiving the 2024 AIA Gold Medal award, three project awards, my three presentations, and many evening events.
Today's post will recap the experience from my perspective!
Photo: Lake Flato evening reception celebrating the 2024 AIA Gold Medal Award
keep reading to learn more...
All of the photos below are in chronological order... I will follow up with a "selfies post" to share the old and new friends I saw!
Highlights:
- Tuesday
- COTE LG dinner
- Wednesday
- COTE LG in-person meeting
- AIA TAP symposium
- Lake|Flato installation in Autodesk booth prep
- Chaos/Enscape mixer
- BuildingGreen SDL mini-summit
- Thursday
- COTE Open Forum
- White House speaker
- My presentation
- Breakout session
- White House listening session (NZB definition)
- Sessions, attended
- COTE reception
- Lake|Flato reception
- Friday
- Keynote
- David and Ted receive AIA gold medal
- My session with LPA and Orcutt|Winslow
- Sessions, attended
- Awards Gala
- Lake|Flato won three project awards
- Saturday
- Keynote (Ruth Carter costume designer)
- Sessions, attended
- /Slantis dinner
Tuesday
I arrive in Washington DC, mid-day on Tuesday. Since we had our official in-person national AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Leadership Group meeting the next morning, those already in town met for dinner.
Wednesday
We had a two-hour in-person COTE LG meeting, plotting the committee's future. There is a lot to build upon, including creating the Framework for Design Excellence, COTE Top Ten awards (professionals and students), recent updates to the AIA Policy and Public Opinion Statements, and more.
The COTE Leadership group, plus Kira Gould, COTE Comms, Beth Brant, COTE Network liaison, and Lisa FerrettoLisa Ferretto, AIA Staff.
AIA Technology in Practice (TAP) held a day-long AI-focused symposium... Chaired by Ryan B. Cameron, AIA.
One of the presenters was Phil Bernstein, a professor at Yale. Phil has a great book on AI and used to be a VP at Autodesk. Check out this somewhat-related post I wrote in 2017: click here.
Chaos hosted an early evening mixer and shared an update on Enscape Impact, their building performance tool, in partnership with IES.
I also attended and did a mini 5-minute presentation at the BuildGreen meetup hosted at ZGF's office. This is a members-only event, but I encourage you to become a member. So much value!
Arathi Gowda (ZGF) and Nadav Malin (BuildingGreen) kicking things off...
Ellen Mitchell from LPA presenting the highlights of our formal AIA session.
Thursday
Our AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Open Forum was packed and successful! I had five minutes to share highlights on the deconstruction policy in San Antonio, Texas. My presentation followed our guest speaker from the White House, Lindsey Falasca, sharing work on market transformation.
Group selfie: the four of us presented at the beginning of the COTE Open Forum:
Next, I was invited to a Q&A and Listening Session on the new National Definition of a Zero Emissions Building. This was facilitated by the White House Climate Policy Office and the Department of Energy. There are some exciting things taking shape in our industry!
Here is a photo of the Lake|Flato installation at the Autodesk book in the Expo hall (which had over 500 vendors)!
Jesse Walton from Mahlum gave a great presentation on his Tableau dashboard designed to visualize a firm's downloaded AIA 2030 Cimmittement data! They have made this dashboard publicly available!!
Our fearless leader, Michelle Amt FAIA, VMDO and COTE LG Chair, speaking at our evening COTE reception. Michelle was elevated to AIA Fellow this year as well!
The Lake|Flato evening reception celebrating David Lake and Ted Flato winning the AIA 2024 Gold Medal award!
Last year's Gold Medalist, Carol Ross Barney! I have worked on two projects with her int he past, at an AOR firm.
Dinner with friends after the receptions...
I may have worn a new bespoke suite from NL Suites in Milwaukee to these evening events:)
Friday
The big moment... David and Ted officially receive the AIA Gold Medal Award on stage during the keynote. Everyone in attendance from the office, nearly 20 of us, got to sit up front!
This was a big screen... Heather Holdridge is shown in a video talking about sustainability at the firm.
Another shot of the Autodesk booth in action.
Three great people about to present on AI and Embodied Carbon!!! I have presented with Jack Rusk (EHDD, on the right) before, I used to work with Elizabeth Tomlinson (Stantec), and I have collaborated with Ellis Herman (Autodesk) on EC in Forma
Our presentation: Culutre Easts Stratigy for Breakfast. We did something very novel for this session... we let the audience choose from 6 categories and then presented four of them in the selected order. By design, we did not cover 1/3 of the content we prepared!!!
Rod Bates presented on visualizing design performance data and shared that Ensacpe Impact (in partnership with IES) will be available as a free beta soon.
The awards gala was so much fun!
Lake|Flato won a COTE Top Ten award for Universities at Shady Grove Biomedical Sciences & Engineering Education Facility at the University of Maryland. Follow this link to learn more about this project: https://www.lakeflato.com/higher-education/biomedical-sciences-engineering-education-facility
We also won awards for the Holdsworth Center and Music Lane, both in Austin, Texas.
Saturday
The Saturday keynote was given by costume designer Ruth Carter... which was amazing.
I attended a great session on adaptive reuse in Chicago, turning office buildings into residential space.
The AIA Book Store! I have, and am a big fan of, the purple book in the foreground. Circular Construction by Felix Heisel.
My last dinner for the conference... hosted by /Slantis! We have so much fun... great conversations and food.
- Andy Robert
- Matilde Bachino
- Carolina Abut
- Paul DiDonato
- Thesla Collier (HNTB)
- Cesar Escalante (Autodesk)
- Christopher Parsons (Knowledge Architecture)
Conclusion
As you can see, it was an exciting and packed event. If you have never attended the national AIA conference, you should check it out. The next one will be in Boston.
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