Design Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the AIA Birmingham Design Awards are and who runs them

The Design Awards are the annual architecture awards program of AIA Birmingham, the Birmingham chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The chapter states its purpose plainly: to recognize excellence in architectural design by architects, to increase awareness of outstanding architecture, and to honor architects, clients, consultants and contractors together. That framing matters for anyone reading the ballot, because the program is a professional design competition with a public-voting component attached, not a business-listing poll where the public decides every winner.

The ballot is hosted on the chapter's own website at aiabham.org, with no external contest host in between. The voting page for the 2020 cycle sits on that domain, and the chapter posts a fresh page for each edition, so the address changes with the year. There is no third-party platform to register with, no promotion network around it, and no separate platform account implied by the ballot itself.

The market is Birmingham, Alabama, where the chapter is based, and the program's reach is the chapter's own membership and the public that follows its work. The table below sets out the fixed facts for the AIA Birmingham program.

The dated record: confirmed editions and the July window

The confirmed edition years for the Design Awards are 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, then 2025 and 2026, an unbroken run that matches the chapter's own statement that it hosts the program each year. The 2020 edition is the best-documented cycle: the chapter's page for that year states that, in addition to its usual Honor and Merit Awards, it added a People's Choice Award with online voting to engage the public and members, and that the vote drew more than 5,000 votes. That figure is the only participation number the chapter has published for the program.

The timing anchor for the current cycle is the ceremony. The chapter's live ballot page notes a Design Awards Ceremony held on Thursday, July 28, which places the program's public moment in July. Because the ceremony is the endpoint of each cycle, the voting window that leads into it sits in the weeks before that date, though AIA Birmingham has printed no opening day and no closing day for the People's Choice vote on its public pages.

Two things the chapter does not publish are worth naming. The full category lineup for a given cycle is not printed on the public ballot pages; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. And no round dates from any external promotion platform exist for this market, because the program runs entirely on the chapter's own domain and no platform promotion is attached to it.

How a supporter votes in the People's Choice Award today

The mechanic a supporter performs is an online vote on the chapter's own website. The chapter added the People's Choice Award specifically to engage the public and its members, so the ballot is open beyond the architecture profession. A supporter reaches the Design Awards page for the current year on aiabham.org, reviews the entered projects, selects the design they want to support, and submits through the prompts on the page. The vote counts toward the People's Choice Award, which sits alongside the juried Honor and Merit Awards rather than replacing them.

Because the host is the chapter's own site, there is no contest platform layer: no platform account, no platform round dates, no third-party leaderboard. Everything a supporter needs is on the chapter's page for the cycle, and the results are announced at the Design Awards Ceremony, which fell on Thursday, July 28 in the current cycle.

What the ballot does not state is a rule on repeat voting. AIA Birmingham prints no ceiling on People's Choice votes and no eligibility rule for them on its public pages, so the live page is the sole authority on whether a return visit counts. Supporters who want to strengthen a project's standing should work from what the ballot actually allows on the day they visit it, and our votes guide covers outreach approaches that fit a chapter-run ballot of this shape.

How this ballot sits beside its Birmingham and Alabama neighbours

The Design Awards share the Alabama best-of market with six sibling programs, and the contrast with each is real. About Town's Best of Birmingham at About Town's Best of Birmingham is a citywide reader poll across local businesses, while the Design Awards ballot lists entered architectural projects and asks the public to pick a favorite among them. The closest relative is AIA Birmingham People's Choice, which the same publisher runs as a separate program with its own page and its own route on this site.

The other four siblings are all outside Birmingham's chapter orbit. CommunityVotes Huntsville runs in Huntsville, Decatur Daily Best Of The Best is a newspaper reader poll, Alabama Magazine's Best of Bama covers the state, and Anniston Star Readers' Choice Awards belongs to the Anniston paper. None of them is a professional design jury with a public component, which is what makes this program distinct in the market.

For a supporter, the host is the practical difference: every sibling runs on a media or platform publisher's infrastructure, while the Design Awards run on the chapter's own domain, with the chapter's own ceremony as the results event.

Strengthening support for a project on this ballot

Support on this ballot means people reaching the chapter's Design Awards page and submitting a People's Choice vote for the project. The chapter's own framing suggests the natural audience: it honors architects, clients, consultants and contractors together, so a project team's clients and partners are the supporters most likely to vote when asked directly. The 2020 cycle showed the ceiling of that approach, with more than 5,000 votes cast once the public was invited in.

What the chapter says about outside help is simply absent: no rules text on purchased support or voting software appears on its public pages, so the ballot's own prompts are the only published constraint. For a wider view of how support campaigns work on chapter-run and award-style ballots, see buy votes online, and read the live page before acting on any tactic.