Membership
At the close of 2022, the AIA was pleased to report that membership numbers broke 96,000 and included a record for new member recruitment! By the Annual Business Meeting in San Francisco in June of 2023, we continued to climb, hitting 96,710 members and 3,300 fellows in 205 international chapters. While membership is strong, the AIA is also deeply dedicated to work that helps us represent a more diverse membership — one that accurately reflects our profession and society where they are. While we continue to have a great deal of work ahead of us on this, our mid-year 2023 reports show 26% female and 17% underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, which reflect some sizable steps in the right direction from where we were only a few years ago.
As one of our organization’s operational priorities for 2023, we are looking to expand and deepen member and volunteer engagement. In an effort to help with this, we are reevaluating our membership categories and looking at membership titling as well as overall membership costs specifically related to attendance within the National Business Meeting and Conference on Architecture. This evaluation began with engagement efforts in the early summer and will continue through the end of the year. The Board will be updated toward the end of this year and will present the findings at the Annual Business Meeting in June 2024.
Events
2023 marked substantial changes for a number of the events held by AIA National. First, we held our newly titled “AIA Leadership Summit and Lobby Day” in place of what was formerly referred to as Grassroots. This pivot aims to focus the event on the volunteer leaders who attend and offers a day of Capitol Hill visits. In 2023, 634 attendees participated in 32 sessions and 425 congressional visits and experienced some amazing networking opportunities! For Hill Day, our leaders, with the help of AIA’s Government Advocacy team, championed H.R. 5291, The Democracy in Design Act, and H.R. 5689, The Resilient AMERICA Act. During this event, our organization also doubled its contribution to ArchiPac!
The Conference on Architecture, A’23, in San Francisco was also a success. In an effort to improve effectiveness, the AIA formally terminated our long-standing contract with the concessioner who had been managing the conference for us. While some elements were still managed by the concessioner for A’23, the AIA’s internal team took back and managed some sizable elements with noticeable improvement from previous years. 2024 will mark the first in many years that the event will be managed entirely internally. We certainly experienced a few hiccups during this change; however, the overall review of the event was overly positive, and for the first time in many years, our core sponsors for 2024 were sold before the end of the 2023 event!
A lesser-known but very important event called the CACE Annual Meeting was held in Atlanta, GA, this year. CACE is the Council of Architectural Component Executives, a group made up of the organization’s Chapter Executive Directors. Over 140 members met for two and a half days in conjunction with the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) Annual Meeting.
2023 also marks the end of a national knowledge event titled “Knowledge Leadership Assembly (KLA).” Historically, this event was held in person and organized by the Board Knowledge Committee in an effort to bring together the leadership of our 21 Knowledge Communities (KCs). The KLAs served as opportunities for sharing between KCs as well as offering time for KCs to plan for the subsequent year’s efforts. Post-COVID events have been virtual and have struggled to meet the former objectives. Nate Hudson, AIA Northern Nevada, was honored to chair the Board Knowledge Committee and emcee its final event. While substantial efforts were made to meet our former objectives in this latest virtual meeting, and despite our attendees’ positive feedback, we feel that in-person opportunities will be far more successful in sharing and conveying knowledge within our organization and beyond.
Last but not least, the AIA Women’s Leadership Summit (WLS) was a complete success. The single-fastest-growing event in the AIA found itself sold out over a month before the event. This in-person event drew almost 900 attendees. Impressively, the AIA is already planning for an audience of double the size in 2024. This year, attendees heard from Melodie Yashar (TED Talk on how to build for human life on Mars) and Aurora James, activist and author of Wildflower: A Memoir.
AIA Building Renewal Update
One of the most monumental projects underway by the AIA in 2023 is its own building renovation. Our headquarters building — located at 1735 New York Avenue in Washington, D.C. and originally designed as an un-insulated, concrete and glass brutalist structure — has undergone decades of use and served generations of our membership. In recent years, the degrading systems and obsolete programming have forced our organization to do as we say and to lead through action!
I’m proud to report that, with the help of our architecture and design team led by EHDD of San Francisco, our own headquarters will be one of the first fully decarbonized major buildings in the United States and will exceed the AIA 2030 Commitment for fossil-fuel use! This is being achieved by a full renovation that focuses on energy efficiency and alternative energy. We have also donated a half million dollars to Habitat for Humanity to provide solar installations for 80 homes in the D.C., Virginia and northeast Tennessee areas to help offset the embodied carbon present in the building’s existing design.
In addition to reprogramming the workplaces of almost 200 employees, another important design element is the new plaza and its approach, redesigned to create an open, welcoming, active, indoor-outdoor usable space. The adjacent and historic Octagon House (originally the AIA headquarters, now managed by the Architects Foundation) is not included in this project’s scope, but for the first time in this building’s long history (built in 1799), it will now have a permanent, accessible entry leading into this important piece of the Washington Mall.
The AIA has now secured permits through the D.C. governmental agencies, concluded negotiations with Turner Construction (the selected general contractor for this project), and has formally begun construction. We are currently on budget and within a schedule on track for an anticipated occupation in Spring 2025.
Current Partnerships and Campaigns
Beginning in late 2022 and continuing through 2023, AIA formed a partnership with CBS and Executive Producer Mike Chapman to work on a prime-time television series devoted to AIA members’ architecture, titled America ByDesign. During the first season, EVP/CEO Lakisha Ann Woods, CAE, made a brief appearance, but for the second season, AIA has played a significant role in this six-part series. Season two began in mid-August 2023 and is available on the CBS Streaming Network, all CBS News mobile apps and on the ByDesign website.
Within the organization, AIA has also begun a video campaign celebrating women and their contributions to the profession and their communities. Weekly, the 60-second video series titled “Future Focused” has been a strong success in the amplification of amazing work propagated by female architects as well as their leadership, mentorship and vision for the future.
AIA is working in conjunction with allied organizations as well. In 2023, AIA applauded NCARB’s decision to eliminate the rolling clock requirement for candidates seeking licensure. Internally, we launched the “Stop the Clock” campaign and encouraged members to share their stories regarding the undue difficulties of gaining licensure to help garner tremendous support for NCARB’s effort.
Member’s Voice Task Force
2023 marks the end of a two-year national member research initiative called the Member’s Voice Task Force (MVTF). Task Force Chair Jessica Sheridan presented her final report of the task force to the Board of Directors earlier this year. This included a recap of the robust research and listening sessions that took place to examine the effectiveness of the communications between components, Strategic Council and the Board of Directors at a high level and make recommendations to increase governance transparency, accountability and communication. A version of this report will be available during the 2024 Annual Business Meeting
With the momentum created at the national level through the array of efforts above, our organization is as healthy as it has ever been and primed to have another very productive year in 2024.
Nathaniel Hudson, AIA, NOMA, NCARB
2021-2023 National Director At-Large | American Institute of Architects, Board of Directors
Principal | FormGrey Studio,
Reno, NV
