VIA Architects at the Forefront of Sustainability Efforts
Ashar Nelson and Megan Nedzinksi attended the 4th Northern New England AIA COTE (Committee on the Environment) Leadership Summit which took place in Portsmouth, NH on June 13 and 14. The COTE Leadership Summits provide an opportunity for sustainability leaders to share experience and develop concrete strategies to encourage widespread adoption of sustainability practices. This year’s theme, Mainstreaming the Demand for Sustainable Architecture, explored ways to further engage clients, communities, and policy makers in the sustainability effort.
Megan Nedzinski, organizing committee member, offered a short presentation (Pecha Kucha style) on building community support for a project through a guided process of careful listening, the use of tools to identify and analyze priorities, and development of designs that accurately reflect a community’s wishes within a framework of sustainability (see related article).
The 2017 VT Summit led to two important outcomes: the development of a 2030 District in Burlington – a partnership of public and private entities committed to taking on the 2030 Challenge; and the adoption of revisions to the national AIA Code of Ethics to include obligations to the environment (see related article in the Fall 2018 issue of Wayword).
Summary reports and a video of the summit will be available shortly on the NNECOTE website.
