The AIA changes its awards – better, but not good enough - Tone on Tuesday, 6 December 2022.

I’ve been trying to change the AIA sustainability awards for almost 20 years. As I wrote eight months ago in ToT #152, I thought things were on the improve. But the most recent awards season, particularly with the NSW Chapter, proved my optimism was unfounded.

As I reported, the National Environment Committee set out a program in April 2006 to integrate the sustainability category completely into the awards. If we’d had our way (I was chair), by now there would be no such thing as a stand-alone sustainable architecture award, but I’ve learnt that things move slowly in the Institute.

Firstly, a separate entry for a sustainable architecture award was discontinued, after many years. Only buildings in the main awards could enter. Much better. Next, ensure all entries could, and should, be considered for a sustainable award, a change that only happened this year. The final step, still some time off, is to ensure that every award made, in every category, was sustainable. End the separate award.

Encouraged by the changes, I nominated for this year’s NSW AIA Chapter juries, and was delighted to be one of four for the Sustainability Award. My fellow jury members were extraordinary (Digby Hall, Chair, Daniel Barbour, and Rose Davies, together we have well over 100 years of professional experience). More importantly the projects we were able to premiate were exceptional. Significant sustainable architecture. So far so good.

Everything else about the process was not so.

All award entrants are required to respond to eight criteria: 1. Conceptual framework; 2. Public and Cultural Benefits; 3. Built Form to Context; 4. Program Resolution; 5. Integration of Allied Disciplines; 6. Cost/Value Outcome; 7. Sustainability; 8. Client and User needs. Note number 7, described in brief as “the benefit to the environment through design”. One step forward.

Then management takes two steps back; not satisfied with sustainability as one of the main criteria, they required all entrants for a sustainable award to answer a further extensive ‘sustainability checklist’, which was tortuous and unnecessary. It turned back the clock to the bad old days of engineering metrics and green scores. Assessment of sustainability in architecture has moved on from checklists, even if the ratings agencies haven’t.

We should be confounding Green Star and Nabers, not using them as yardsticks for our awards. Although the awards booklet says it embraces the triple bottom line, you can’t find it in a checklist. It’s holistic thinking at its core, at the concept of the design, and how design decisions that follow can be made to improve the overall footprint. It’s not identifying bolt-on ‘greengineering’ that can be used to assuage bad conceptual mistakes. That way lies ‘greenwash’.

Even then, the sustainable juries didn’t get to judge the submitted checklists; that was done anonymously in Melbourne HQ, without recourse. An exception proves the rule: unhappy at not being shortlisted for a sustainable award, a Victorian entrant appealed vociferously, and was included. No-one knew how the rules were applied, least of all the jury, and what exceptions could be made (none).

Our jury heard informally about many projects with good sustainable credentials, that were intimidated by the ‘checklist’, and declined to enter. We asked if our jury could look at all the entries, to see if there were others worth examining for sustainability, in line with the original intention. But we were denied. A jury can’t look at entries. Who makes these rules?

The result? Lingering resentment and resistance throughout the profession to entering the sustainable awards. Entries were almost 50% down on last year, and will be fewer in future if nothing changes. It must be more transparent and democratic.

We plowed on. Fortunately a few entries we were judging were superb. They reduced the building footprint overall, and carefully weighed up design considerations. Site visits, one day in Sydney, another on the south coast, were so enjoyable, talking to very committed, mostly young, architects about their process; and then arguing the toss in the (all electric) car between visits.

The management of the process to this point was very professional (come on down Peter Fry). But then things went weird. We were told that our 40 or so hours of visits, discussions and deliberations would garner 5 formal CPD points. Then the offer was retracted: the NSW ARB doesn’t rate jury work as formal CPD, which is a huge mistake: an awards jury requires more intellectual rigour than any other of form of activity in architecture that I have encountered other than authoring a book.

The jury is then told to buy tickets to the awards. Huh? Talk about insulting your volunteer members. Reluctantly we did, and we attended, only to discover that the sustainable awards jury is not listed in the awards booklet. After all our work, we were invisible.

More worryingly, at least half a dozen of the awards made that night were highly questionable, given where we are in sustainable terms in the 21^st century. And the event is being held in a building sponsored by a massive multinational fossil fuel company.

All of which leads me to believe that the AIA doesn’t understand sustainability.

Some 15 years ago I co-convened the Institute’s annual conference with Stephen Varady, who organised the main headline sessions, whilst I ran four half-day parallel sessions on sustainability, which one third of attendees enjoyed. At the wrap up, the then president was rightly effusive in his praise of Varady’s work, but didn’t mention the sustainable sessions at all. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

If the AIA wants to be taken seriously on sustainability it should first reform its awards. It needs to listen to its expert members. Get rid of the checklist’. Use point 7 of every entry, if the applicants are serious they will put effort in there. Either task the main juries with making recommendations about possible sustainable projects for review by a sustainable awards jury, OR have the sustainable awards jury sit in on every presentation.

And then set a timeline, say five years, for every award winner to meet a minimum standard of sustainability. Cut out the greenwash, and the sense that architects can buy an award if their throw enough distracting money at a project.

I’m not showing the sustainable award winners here, space doesn’t permit and it’s not germane to this diatribe. I’ll write another ToT next week on why they won. But their quality, which you can see on pages 124-130 of the awards booklet, is what compensated for the distressing process.

However, there is no guarantee that a similar good outcome will eventuate next year if the same bad process is followed. Ensuring more of these real sustainable projects get acknowledged is why I am to agitating for changes inside the AIA, as I’ve been writing in my Friday column, A&D Another Thing.

Disclaimer: A&D, that publishes this column, also runs a Sustainability Award program. They may be seen as competitors. I cannot comment or compare their processes or awards as I have not participated in any way for over ten years. I will research and respond to any criticisms that readers may forward.

Tone Wheeler is an architect / the views expressed are his.

Tone on Tuesday #176. 22 August 2023 (week 34).

Long columns are Tone on Tuesday. Short shots are in A&D Another Thing every Friday.

You can contact TW at toneontuesday@gmail.com

Tone Wheeler

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