The AIA Conference on Architecture and Design 2024 took place last week and wrapped up this past weekend. More than 10,000 design professionals and academics attended the annual conference held this year in Washington, DC.
Highlights
Zero Emissions Building
Multiple highlights were present at AIA24 this year, including special keynotes, a joint announcement between the AIA and the Biden Administration, and exciting digital technologies showcased on the exhibition floor.
Importantly, this year, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) fully supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to further the national definition of a Zero-Emissions Building. White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi announced from the mainstage at AIA24 that the U.S. Department of Energy has published a National Definition of a Zero-Emissions Building: Part 1 Operational Emissions from Energy Use.
The image above shows Autodesk Forma’s new embodied carbon calculation-estimation capabilities. Tools like Autodesk Forma and several others can help architects understand the embodied carbon impact of their building designs.
The new definition can be uniformly and standardly applied to both new and existing buildings and will serve as a framework for the industry, helping architects and other AEC professionals tackle climate change by reducing building operational emissions. A forthcoming Part 2 of the definition focuses on embodied carbon emissions, which the AIA and its members are working with the administration to advise. New software technologies such as Autodesk Forma specifically address embodied carbon in building design and energy analysis has even penetrated design workflows at the stage of visualization in tools from Chaos Enscape.
The reuse of existing buildings is critical to reducing embodied carbon—dramatically reducing embodied carbon by relying on the reuse and restoration of materials already at the site—by saving up to 50-70% of embodied carbon over new construction. An example of recent reuse is the full-scale restoration of the Detroit train station by the Ford Motor Company.
Keynotes
There were three keynote talks this year running all three days at the AIA24 convention. On June 6th, #1 New York Times bestselling author and happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks spoke on the theme of “Build the Life You Want.” June 7th followed with “Designing for Health & Safety” with CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And finally, on June 8th, “Storytelling & Representation” with Academy Award-winning designer Ruth Carter.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta on stage with AIA 2024 President Kimberly Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s fireside chat discussion with AIA 2024 President Kimberly N. Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC, was particularly interesting from the perspective of professionals who merge two distinct job roles in their lives (as in medical doctor and surgeon and television journalism). Dr. Gupta told the incredible story of switching hats while in the Middle East, covering the war in Afghanistan, performing brain surgery on a fallen US soldier, and saving his life. The story was a lesson on agility and creativity in adapting to an unanticipated situation.
Coverage Overview
Architosh’s coverage overview will feature our annual attention on the digital technologies exhibited on the show floor. This will include our 10th annual Architosh AIA BEST of SHOW honors for the top digital technological solutions exhibited across several categories.
Notable this year was that the Nemetschek Group held the largest booth by far in the Innovation section of the exhibit hall, where the company focused on its top software brands used in architecture and AEC/O. These include both BIM solutions in Archicad and Vectorworks, as well as construction software industry leader Bluebeam. Other BIM industry tools of note within the Group shown included Solibri as well as dRofus. A new digital twin platform in dTwin was also exhibited.
A rendering image from our visit with the Chaos Enscape team at their booth at AIA24. Our meeting with the Chaos team included a look into the future of new features across their platforms.
Autodesk, with its usual busy booth, also had multiple solutions exhibited, with Forma, Revit, AutoCAD, and XR Workshop (home of former IrisVR and The Wild technologies) showcased, along with a special guest section for Epic’s Twinmotion. Chaos also had a colorful booth alongside these two AEC software industry giants. Chaos is arguably the largest software company—outside of Autodesk and the Nemetschek Group—focused on the architecture market, with its top brands in V-Ray and Enscape dominating the visualization workflows of architectural professionals.
We have much more to write about and showcase so stay tuned all this week for our AIA24 coverage.
