COTE® Top Ten Award
The industry’s best-known award program for sustainable design excellence.
For more information on opening and deadline dates, please see the AIA Awards FAQ.
Celebrating sustainable design excellence
The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) Top Ten award program, now in its 29th year, was founded on the idea that sustainability is essential to design excellence and vice versa. The COTE® Top Ten has become the industry’s best-known award program recognizing innovative projects integrating exemplary performance with compelling design.
Entrants
- Any U.S. licensed architect may enter.
- On team projects, the architect submitting the entry doesn’t have to be the head of the team but must be a noted major contributor to the project.
- Submitting firms must have signed the AIA 2030 Commitment.
Projects
- Completed new buildings, renovations, restorations, interior architecture, and urban/regional plans are eligible.
- Projects may be located anywhere in the world.
- Projects must have been completed at least twelve (12) months prior to the submission deadline, with no additional age-related restrictions.
- You may submit multiple entries.
Schedule
For more information on opening and deadline dates, please see AIA Awards FAQ.
Each entry is evaluated by the Jury on how successfully the project meets its individual requirements, with particular emphasis on design excellence, including a sense of place and purpose, of community and history, performance, aesthetics, community connection and resilience, and stewardship of the natural environment. Projects are evaluated through the Framework for Design Excellence which seeks to inform progress toward a zero-carbon, equitable, resilient, and healthy built environment, and is comprised of ten (10) Principles: Design for Integration, Equitable Communities, Ecosystems, Water, Economy, Energy, Wellbeing, Resources, Change, and Discovery.
Fee: Single project submissions are $450 each. Submitting the same project to additional award categories costs an extra $100 per category.
For a detailed list of submission criteria, fees, and required information, download the 2024 AIA COTE® Top Ten Sample Application.
Please note: Some components of the sample application are subject to change from the final version and are merely here to allow a submitter to view the major criteria prior to logging on to the awards platform. Please rely on the online awards platform for the final criteria.
Questions? Please see the AIA Awards FAQ.
Nadine Saint-Louis, AIA, Chair, McHarry Associates, Miami
Yu-Ngok Lo, FAIA, YNL Architects, Culver City, Calif.
Jack Rusk, Assoc. AIA, EHDD, San Francisco
Eddy Santosa, AIA, Mott MacDonald, Los Angeles
2024 winners
Alice West Fleet Elementary School, VMDO Architects, Arlington, Va.
Hayward Library & Community Learning Center, Noll & Tam Architects, Hayward, Calif.
MASS MoCA Building 6, Bruner/Cott Architects, North Adams, Mass.
PAE Living Building, ZGF Architects, Portland, Ore.
The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, MASS Design Group, Kinigi, Musanze, Rwanda
The Tom and Ruth Harkin Center at Drake University, BNIM, Des Moines, Iowa
Thurston Hall Renovation, VMDO, Washington, D.C.
USG Biomedical Sciences & Engineering Education Building, Cooper Carry, Alexandria, Va. and Lake|Flato Architects, Rockville, Md.
Pacific Landing Affordable Housing, Patrick Tighe Architecture, Santa Monica, Calif.
Past winners
For information on prior years' winners, please send a request to cote@aia.org.
COTE Super Spreadsheet
Understand and calculate metrics associated with the Framework for Design Excellence in order to analyze and improve your project.