ACSA honors architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship, and service. The award-winning professors inspire and challenge students, contribute to the profession’s knowledge base, and extend their work beyond the borders of academia into practice and the public sector.

In the context of diminishing enrollments, budget deficits, polarization, censorship, eroding public perception of higher education, and pressures to deliver job-ready graduates, how can architecture education still take the long view? How do we acknowledge that change is inevitable and important, while continuously exercising the necessary judgment to do what is best for the discipline and its future practitioners? This year’s Administrators Conference will take “The Long View,” in an effort to ensure our educational imperative remains aligned with the long-term goals of the discipline and evolving needs of society.

The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) are pleased to announce the winners of the Timber in the City 5: Urban Habitats Competition.

The fifth installment of the Timber in the City series, this year’s competition challenged students to devise ways of meeting urban housing needs through the addition of an overbuild, or vertical extension, made of wood to an existing building or structure. Students reimagined our existing cities by using wood systems to design additions that provide more desirable, sustainable, and valuable living and working environments. The seven winning projects demonstrate creative and clear approaches to designing a healthy built environment with timber as a central material, emphasizing the importance of addressing both sustainability and affordability in urban development.

The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) are pleased to announce the 2024 Timber Education Prize winners. Established in 2022, this annual prize recognizes effective and innovative curricula that create a stimulating and evidence-based environment for learning about structural lumber systems.

From seminars and design studios to building technology classes and structured lessons, the winning courses will equip students with the knowledge and design skills to embrace wood-based solutions with confidence and enthusiasm. These courses highlight the significance of sustainable education, emphasizing the lower-carbon benefits of timber compared to traditional building technologies.

The American Institute of Architects, Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE), in partnership with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), have selected the recipients of the 2024 AIA COTE Top Ten for Students Competition. The competition recognizes 10 outstanding projects that meaningfully address the impacts of climate change. These creative designs imagine a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. The winning projects emphasize achieving net-zero emissions, adapting to resilient climate impacts, and addressing social and environmental inequities.

The program challenged students to design projects that use a creative and innovative, thoroughly integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology to provide design solutions that protect and enhance the environment.

The Brick Education Prize seeks to recognize effective, innovative proposals and curricula that create a stimulating environment for learning about brick. These proposals should equip students with the knowledge and design skills to achieve sustainable design goals in a range of project types. From seminars and design studios to building technology tutorials and lessons, the proposals for incorporating brick into your courses and offered at schools of architecture are endless.

The focus area for this issue seeks to explore inventive topics from different aspects of the built environment. Innovation captures new ideas, methods, strategies, products, forms, designs, etc. Innovation is the action or process of innovating, introducing, or presenting novelties and modifying what is established by introducing new elements or forms. It is a change introduced to an existing product. Imaginative ideas include improvements that capture how components or processes are modified or configured in designs, systems, or domains, like building materials, data processing, digital fabrication, computation, history and theory of innovation. Innovation is critical to the success of any endeavor, such as an organization, enterprise, field or discipline, or industry. Invention is the primary driver of advancement in the built environment and other sectors, as it provides approaches, resources, and concepts generated and realized, leading to a better and more sustainable built environment. Invention guides all disciplines, and inventive ideas involve various players with diverse incentives.