Get ready for the Oregon Architecture Awards and People’s Choice Awards in a few local sections.

The AIA Oregon Board of Directors accepted the recommendations from the Design Awards Task Force at the July 17 meeting, and now the focus is on planning the 2020 events. Due to the pandemic, the events will be all virtual. This includes the Oregon Architecture Awards, formerly the Portland Architecture Awards, and local section People’s Choice Awards in the Eugene, Salem, and Southern Oregon Sections.

See the July 23rd Message From for more information about the Design Award Task Force. Members of the task force joined the 7/24 AIA Oregon VHH to discuss their recommendations, the 2020 programs, and the recommendations that are targeted for 2021.

The purpose of our design awards programs is to celebrate the value of good design.

The Architecture Awards program is a juried-reviewed program intended to acknowledge design excellence. The Oregon Architecture Award is a chapter-wide program and the Task Force and Board of Directors agreed the name change was appropriate to acknowledge we are now a state-wide chapter.

The People’s Choice Awards programs will occur at the local level at the discretion of the local section. The format of the program presents local work to the community through displays and a voting process. AIA Oregon is developing a framework for the program for sections to implement.

In response to the AIA Resolution for Urgent and Sustained Climate Action adopted at the 2019 AIA National Convention in Las Vegas, we are beginning to incorporate the AIA Framework for Design Excellence, formerly known as the COTE Top Ten into the 2020 design awards program. Each submission in any of our programs are required to address how they incorporated four of the ten categories in the project description. Each submission is required to address "Design for Integration" and "Design for Discovery", and two other categories as determined by the selecting firm.

The submittal requirements for the 2020 programs are similar to 2019 programs, however we are using a new awards program platform, therefore there will be some changes. The requirements will be provided in the Call for Submissions, which will be issued later.

Oregon Architecture Awards