Motivations and Manifestations of the Circular Economy
October 13, 2026

12 pm – 1 pm

1 HSW Pending

Speaker: Purva Chawla Jain

Description: Participants examine how material extraction, construction, operation, renovation, and disposal contribute to embodied carbon, pollution, resource depletion, and climate change. Understanding these impacts enables architects to make design decisions that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and support healthier, more resilient communities throughout a building’s life cycle. The session also examines the circularity hierarchy, from adaptive reuse and building-component reuse to recycling and uses built precedents to evaluate the consequences of these strategies. Architects will learn to assess how retaining buildings and materials can reduce construction waste, avoid impacts associated with new material production, and conserve resources while meeting project needs. This knowledge supports architects’ responsibility to protect the public by considering the long-term environmental, social, and economic effects of the buildings they design.

Circular Economy: Sustainability in the Building Sector

An immersive and comprehensive exploration into the intersection of the circular economy and the building sector within the scope of architectural practice. The course will explore the multifaceted dimensions of sustainable building practices, beginning with foundational knowledge of the global circular economy and progressing to topics such as eco-economics, regulatory compliance, waste management, innovative design strategies, and the deployment of emerging technologies in the building deconstruction and material reuse sector. The program consists of a half-day in-person summit led by industry partners and a global specialist, Eva Gladek, from Metabolic in the Netherlands, who is an international leader in circular economic practices. The keynote speaker will be Purva Chawla, an adjunct lecturer from SMU Lyle School of Engineering, whose career has focused on the profession of architecture and its role in advancing the circular economy. The program will be moderated by a North Carolina Architect, Donald Green, who has over a decade of work in this sector.

Monday, October 5th

10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

AIA NC Center for Architecture and Design

14 East Peace Street, Raleigh, NC

3.5 HSW Hours

Proper specification of coiling door systems is essential to ensuring code compliance, building performance, and occupant safety. This course explores common design considerations and specification challenges that can lead to Requests for Information (RFIs) during construction. Participants will gain practical guidance for selecting and specifying coiling door systems that meet project requirements while supporting life safety, security, and long-term building performance.

Join NAWIC Triangle and AIA WIA for a unique evening of honest conversation, meaningful connection, and shared experiences.

We Messed Up is built around a simple but powerful idea: every successful leader has made mistakes, faced setbacks, and learned valuable lessons along the way. Yet those stories are often the ones we hear the least.

Throughout the evening, women leaders will share brief, personal stories about a career misstep, how they recovered, and what they learned from the experience. Their stories will be relatable, insightful, and a reminder that growth often comes from the moments that don't go as planned. Before the program begins, enjoy networking over drinks and light bites. Attendance is limited to encourage authentic conversation and meaningful connection.

Our hope is that attendees leave feeling more confident taking risks, knowing that even accomplished leaders have had moments they'd rather forget.

Join us for Building Conversations: Architects and Local Leaders, a morning roundtable bringing together local elected officials and members of the design profession for meaningful dialogue about the future of our communities.  

Over a light breakfast, we’ll explore how zoning, housing policy, and planning decisions impact affordability, sustainability, walkability, and civic design, and why architects should be at the table when those decisions are made.  

This is more than a networking event; it’s an opportunity to influence how our cities grow. Architects and designers are uniquely positioned to help shape equitable, people-centered places, and this conversation is a critical step toward making design a central part of public policy.

Light Breakfast will be provided  
Hosted by AIA Triangle and CITYBUILDER
Funded by an AIA NC ACTIVATE Grant  

Join us in person for AIA WNC’s Community Mixer Series – A Living Archive, where stories and connections come alive!

AIA WNC Presents - Community Mixer Series - A Living Archive

"Shaping our Horizon"

Architecture is more than just the shaping of buildings; it cultivates the heart, identity, and resilience of a community. In the wake of growth, change, and regional recovery, how do we intentionally design the future of Western North Carolina?

AIA WNC invites you to the launch of Shaping our Horizon, a dynamic five-part community mixer series. This isn’t just a networking night—it’s a vital platform for cross-sector conversations, sharing recovery lessons, and strengthening the partnerships that will define our region's future. Over five gatherings, we are bringing together architects, developers, makers, and neighbors to elevate resilient design and act as a regional convener for recovery leadership.

The Vision: Convening, Collaboration, and Collective Legacy

The true value of this series lies in the connections we build and the ideas we exchange. To capture the spirit of these conversations, we are inviting attendees to help build a living visual archive of our region’s landscape over the course of the series:

Dialogue & Leadership: Grounding our collective future in community needs, shared resilience strategies, and regional design history.

The Living Archive: While our primary focus is the conversation happening now, the stories, data, sketches, and media contributed throughout the series will culminate in a major multi-media art installation and educational showcase in 2027—serving as a powerful lasting reflection of the vision and recovery efforts happening across WNC.

For our inaugural mixer, we are focusing on the bedrock of our region’s architectural identity. We want to honor where we’ve been to better understand where we are going.

How to Participate on August 13th:

Connect & Collaborate: Engage in meaningful dialogue with local design-build professionals, developers, and neighbors working toward regional recovery.

Share Your Perspective: Bring historic or recent photographs, blueprints, sketches, art or media that represent WNC's built environment and community resilience to contribute to our growing regional archive.

Listen: Soak in the atmosphere with a live performance by local favorite Clint Roberts.

Whether you are an architect with blueprints to share, a developer shaping the skyline, or a resident passionate about your neighborhood, your voice and your design leadership belong here. Let’s build this story together.

Using Hanbury Design’s 2025 NC COTE Design Award as a case study, this course will provide guidance on completing the COTE Top 10 Tool, which serves as companion information for COTE design award applications. Attendees will become familiar with the Top 10 Tool worksheet and receive guidance on collecting the data required for their own submissions.

Designing Modern Learning Organizations: Rethinking AEC Learning & Development in the Age of AI 

This session offers a vision for transforming your AEC firm into a Modern Learning Organization—one that continuously captures, shares, and scales expertise even as projects grow more complex, experienced professionals retire, and AI reshapes the field.

You’ll see real-world examples of how leading AEC firms are designing learning ecosystems by combining curated learning paths, modular on-demand content, expert-led instruction, hybrid learning experiences, and AI-powered knowledge delivery into a cohesive whole that connects people to the right knowledge at the right time.

Announcing the speaker:

Christopher Parsons, Founder and CEO, Knowledge Architecture

As Founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture, Christopher is responsible for product design, marketing strategy, and organizational health. He is the host of the Smarter by Design podcast and the author of Smarter by Design, a bi-weekly newsletter exploring how leading AEC firms manage information, share knowledge, and build learning organizations. He is also the executive producer of KA Connect, Knowledge Architecture’s annual knowledge and learning management conference for the AEC industry. He has been a technology leader in the AEC industry since 2002, including serving as Chief Information Officer at Steinberg Architects and as Information Technology Director at SMWM (now Perkins+Will). Christopher has a degree in History from Wake Forest University.

AIA Member Registration

Non-Member Registration

Operable walls offer the opportunity to maximize any space by implementing superior engineering, aesthetics and technology. Join us in this one-hour course as we dive into key understandings of operable partitions to address panel construction, suspension systems, sealing mechanisms, design options, automation, and safety. By the end of this course, design professionals will learn how all of these components work together to impact a project's environment in terms of space management as well as the end users' experience and well-being.

1 HSW Hour

AIA Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_E6K_-J5LTgyIZmknTKCc6A

Non-AIA Member Registration: https://square.link/u/M3znNEar