News and Information

The Problem

As architects we play an important role in designing, restoring and otherwise influencing not only buildings, but also communities. In reversing the climate change crisis, buildings are only a piece of a larger picture that includes transportation, landscape and site planning, lifestyle and other aspects integral to to communities. By investigating "low carbon" communities and illuminating their approaches, successes, challenges, and failures, we can help catapult efforts around the country to make such communities work.

The Fellow will study approaches, systems and factors that proved successful at achieving both quantitative and qualitative goals. It may also point out specific areas for codes, regulations and incentive structures in order to achieve desired community goals with respect to reducing carbon.

The Solution

One student will serve as the 2010 AIAS/AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Research Scholar. The Scholar will have regular communication through the completion of the research work to be defined jointly by the Advisor and Scholar. The Scholar is encouraged to engage their local AIA COTE if available.

An educational scholarship of $9,000.00 will be provided for the twelve-week research project based on a salary of $18.75/hr, 40hrs./week. All research shall take place starting June 14, 2010 and should be completed by September 1, 2010.

The Objectives

Provide a case-study based analysis of US and international low carbon communities, to highlights successful strategies and lessons learned that can be useful for prospective future developments.

The Work Plan

This fellowship will involve three months of research, analysis and writing, roughly according to the following task timeline (exact time frame to be determined according to Fellow%u2019s summer schedule):

• Month One:
  Determine a list of low-carbon communities and associated key players. Conduct preliminary literature research and first-hand interviews.
• Month Two:
  Create a spreadsheet that catalogs all the case studies, pertinent defining information (community size, climate, location, industries, etc.) and records per-capita metrics that these communities are tracking (energy use, emissions, waste generation, water use, etc.)
  List information about how the communities are performing relative to their goals; what is working well and what have the challenges been; what approaches failed, what are the lessons learned.
• Month Three:
  Write prose case studies (for a reasonable subset of key communities) that can be published and disseminated by AIA; provide charts or images as appropriate.

The Timeline

The application submissions must be uploaded to the scholarship Web site no later than 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on May 31, 2010. The recipient will be announced on both the AIAS and AIA Web sites the week of June 7, 2010. Following the selection process the scholar will be put in touch with an advisor to make any changes to the proposed work schedule to start June 14, 2010 and conclude by September 1, 2010.

The Application

Eligibility: Program is open to students studying at U.S.-based institutions and having completed their third year on or before June 1, 2010.

Applicants are asked to submit a resume, a short proposal of their research plan not exceeding 1000 words, no more than two letters of recommendation, a list of courses taken that are relevant to the research and a small sample of design work not exceeding five 8.5" x 11" pages.

Submissions must be saved as a single portable document format (PDF) file. The file should be titled with the applicant's first initial and last name (e.g., j_doe). The entire application file should not exceed 20MB in size. Failure to follow these standards may result in disqualification of the application.

The decisions made by the jury reviewing the applications are final and may not be appealed.

Use the button below to submit your application (all submissions must be made via this link).