AIA Guides for Equitable Practice
The Guides for Equitable Practice are a vital part of AIA’s long-term commitment to lead efforts that ensure the profession of architecture is as diverse as the nation we serve. These guides will help you make the business and professional case for ensuring that your organization meets the career development, professional environment, and cultural awareness expectations of current and future employees and clients.
Guides for Equitable Practice >
Intercultural Competence
You’ll learn architecture’s challenges—including white male–dominated structures, the hero-architect trope, and extreme criticism—clash with collaborative practices, work-life balance, and practitioners’ diverse backgrounds. This guide covers questions to assess organizations’ intercultural competence levels along with concrete steps individuals and firms can take to create a level playing field and effect structural change.
Chapter 1: Intercultural Competence >
Workplace Culture
You’ll learn how workplace culture affects individuals, firms, and the profession—from retention to strategic planning and perception of the field. This guide also contains the legal aspects of harassment, including individuals’ responsibilities, questions to assess organizations’ workplace culture, and ways to improve your own organizations’ workplace culture.
Chapter 2: Workplace Culture >
Recruitment and Retention
Learn how to maintain a diverse workforce and compliance with laws governing recruitment and promotion. This guide includes concrete steps individuals and firms can take to increase fairness, build healthy pipelines, and boost retention.
Chapter 4: Recruitment and Retention >
Mentorship and Sponsorship
You’ll learn what equitable and inclusive mentorship and sponsorship look like, abiding by harassment and discrimination laws, maintaining ethical relationships, being an equitable mentor, mentee, and sponsor, and encouraging a culture of mentorship and sponsorship.
Chapter 6: Mentorship and Sponsorship >
Advancing Careers
You’ll learn how firms and institutions can help support career advancement equitably by clarifying criteria for promotion, supporting networks, changing workplace culture from career ladder to lattice, and providing access to training and development. This guide details the importance of approaching career advancement as a shared responsibility between employee and employer.
Chapter 7: Advancing Careers >
Please note third-party resources are provided for informational purposes and represent the views of the respective organizations.
National Museum of African American History and Culture: Talking About Race
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s website for resources on race, including a history on the foundations of race, addressing bias, and community building.
NMAAHC: Talking About Race >
#BlackLivesMatter: What Matters
What Matters combines documentary narrative with interviews to illuminate specific, timely issues, aiming to create safe dialogue to promote freedom, justice, and collective liberation. What Matters is a salve and a safe place where we can connect, learn, think freely, and transform the world.
#BlackLivesMatter: What Matters >
Architect Magazine: Increasing Diversity in Architecture
A three-part series on diversity in architecture that highlights the barriers to entry, designer-led solutions to increasing diversity, and improving representation in the building profession.
Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Barriers to Entry >
Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Designer-Led Solutions >
Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Firm Initiatives >
When Architecture and Racial Injustice Intersect (Architectural Digest)
This Architectural Digest article details the work that the National Trust for Historic Preservations’ African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is doing to preserve Black history.
Please note third-party resources are provided for informational purposes and represent the views of the respective organizations.
BIPOC studios listed with job openings
A group of architects and designers have created a dynamic Google Docs spreadsheet to highlight design, architecture, engineering or planning studios founded by black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) that may have job opportunities.
BIPOC studios listed with job openings >
Diversity Advancement Scholarship
Incoming and current architecture students can apply for the Architects Foundation’s Diversity Advancement Scholarship, which was created to help more minority students pursue a successful career in architecture.
Amount: $20,000
Diversity Advancement Scholarship >
Paul R. Williams Student Scholarship
This scholarship provides financial assistance to African-American students studying or about to start studying at a NAAB-accredited architecture program.
Amount: $500
Paul R. Williams Student Scholarship >
Professional resources for black designers and architects
If you’re looking to join a networking group or expand your community within the profession, consider one of the organizations on this list that have made it their mission to support architects and designers of color.
Professional resources for black designers and architects >
Please note third-party resources are provided for informational purposes and represent the views of the respective organizations.
Register to vote
Enact change by voting in your local, state, and federal elections. Register to vote, get election reminders, and more here.
Register to vote >
#BlackLivesMatter: Resources
Black Lives Matter toolkits for conflict resolution, healing justice, ways to take action toward racial justice and resources to intervene when violence is inflicted on Black communities.
Black Lives Matter: Resources >
Linkedin: Free Courses to Help You Become a Stronger Ally and Have Inclusive Conversations
LinkedIn’s free courses can help you understand and confront unconscious bias, have inclusive conversations and communicate across cultures, and create a diverse and inclusive workplace.
Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging for All >
5 free courses (Business Insider)
Consider taking one of these free online courses about race and America’s history of injustice from three Ivy League schools. The open courses present an average time commitment of 2-4 hours per week.
5 free online courses from Ivy League schools to educate yourself on race and America’s long history of injustice >
Please note third-party resources are provided for informational purposes and represent the views of the respective organizations.
