AIA26 Conference on Architecture and Design, San Diego, 10-14th June 2026
For four days in mid-June, over 13,000 architects and AEC professionals gathered in sunny San Diego California for the annual AIA 2026 Conference on Architecture and Design. As the first international chapter, AIAUK continued our long tradition of attending the national conference to represent our members’ concerns, promote their interests, and vote in the elections for AIA’s 2027 National Officers.
The days were packed with keynotes, talks, workshops, seminars, site visits, studio tours, and professional events, given by practitioners, academics, and allied professionals, held both across the city, and alongside the industry’s largest expo in the vast Arthur Erikson-designed conference centre on the downtown waterfront. The range and variety of events was astounding, but key themes of navigating the rapidly evolving potentials and threats of AI in both architectural practice and education, responding to the urgency of the climate emergency, and actively engaging with the worsening national and international housing crisis, were clearly evident.
Attendees celebrated a range of AIA recognitions, including the AIA Gold Medal award for Shigeru Ban, and the elevation of a select group of members to Fellowship (FAIA), honouring exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society. This year, at the historic Jacobs Music Centre, our very own longstanding AIAUK member Bea Sennewald AIA, Director at Article 25 in London, was one of only two international members to be elevated to Fellowship - many congratulations to her.
AIAUK’s assigned representative - our founding Sustainability Director, 2026 International Director, and 2025 President Dr Mark E Breeze AIA - participated in a wide range of international and national events, forums, meetings, and talks, including presenting at the AIA International Workshop examining notions of ‘The Edge Condition in Global Architectural Practice'.
The Conference was a remarkable coming-together of global design professionals, with too many highlights to mention in any meaningful detail here, but - as in prior years - the standout favourite of all seemed to be the puppy park, hidden in the depths of the Expo as a masterful piece of marketing by an artificial lawn manufacturer. Members should be reassured to know that AIAUK was well represented across the gamut of events for the full duration of the Conference; our assigned representative is still trying to unsubscribe from artificial lawn mailing lists.
