RIBA Journal: AIA Conference Gives an Insight into Changing Priorities for US Architects

A writer from the Royal Institute of British Architects checked in with LPA CEO Wendy Rogers as part of her coverage of the 2025 AIA Conference on Architecture & Design.

Excerpted from the RIBA Journal article by Laura Iloniemi.

This year’s American Institute of Architects (AIA) conference was held last month at the Rafael Viñoly-designed Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. I travelled to Massachusetts to see what the event might offer UK and European architects interested in working in the United States. …

[The] notion of a commitment to creating a better world by investing in our communities was a recurring theme at the conference. The subtext was that in the current political climate, it is incumbent on architects rather than public policy to ensure that design helps to meet societal and environmental challenges. On this topic, keynote speaker Pete Buttigieg, former US secretary for transportation and one-time presidential candidate, said that salvation comes from ‘the local’. Solutions, he said, are now definitely bottom up. Offline is the way, too, he suggested, because buildings – unlike the virtual world – are places of trust for face-to-face encounters. …

It was clear the AIA is now focused on intention in the way it may once have focused on invention. Even during tech guru Allie K Miller’s keynote, AI was relegated to being a powerful tool that, although doubling its capability every seven months, is no substitute for genuine human relationships, outperforming us as people only in specific tasks. …

Wendy Rogers from LPA Design Studios, whose practice received this year’s AIA Architecture Firm Award, spoke about maintaining relevance in a time of disruptive technology. She noted that ‘our clients aren’t asking us to solve climate change’. And yet this multidisciplinary office of over 500 has become a national leader in energy performance, not only bagging industry certificates for its projects but being the first firm in the US employing over 100 staff to hit the 70 per cent energy use reduction benchmark. Again, the achievement reflects the principle of being a self-starter in ‘doing the right thing’.

It was this new pioneering advocacy spirit of the profession that stood out most at the conference, and especially the way it was evident in larger firms, ones often described disparagingly as the ‘commercial architects’.

Read the full article in RIBA Journal.