AIA East Tennessee Design Awards People's Choice Award: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the People's Choice Award is and who runs it

AIA East Tennessee attaches a public-vote prize to its Design Awards, and it calls that prize the People's Choice Award. The chapter runs the awards from its own site, and the prize is the one it opens to public visitors. The program covers design work submitted to the chapter, and the voting page sits inside the same design awards section as the submissions form.

The chapter's site groups the awards with its events, so the People's Choice vote sits beside the design awards gala rather than in a separate contest portal.

The organizer's page calls the current program the "2026 Design Awards" and presents the People's Choice Award as part of it. Every project submitted for the 2026 Design Awards is entered into the People's Choice Award automatically, so a design team does not need a separate application to be on the ballot.

Which editions are confirmed and when the voting window falls

The award has confirmed editions in 2024 and 2026, and the 2026 program is the current cycle. The organizer's page points visitors to the vote during a September window, which opens on September 1st and runs through the 30th.

The organizer has not named a results date for the People's Choice Award, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The timeline below separates what the page dates from what it leaves open.

Because the award returns in more than one year, the September window is the part of the calendar a visitor can plan around.

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

A visitor votes by going to the design awards page during September and using the ballot the organizer links there. Because visitors decide the result rather than a jury, the organizer's page is the one place the ballot can be found.

The organizer does not state how many projects a visitor may choose, and it does not set out a repeat-vote rule on the page. The ballot instructions are the only place those rules would appear, so a visitor should read them before voting.

The People's Choice Award does not list its ballot categories on the page, so a visitor sees the projects on the ballot itself and nowhere else.

How the People's Choice Award sits beside other Tennessee programs

The People's Choice Award sits in a small group of Tennessee programs. Most of the others are city best-of readers' polls in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville, while this award belongs to an architecture chapter and its design submissions process. The difference shapes who enters and who votes.

A design firm looking for a readers' poll will find the city programs closer to what it knows, while a firm that submits design work to the chapter will find this award is tied to its own submission. The table lays out how each sibling is built.

Strengthening a design firm's entry in the People's Choice Award

A design firm that wants more visitors to vote for its project has one honest lever: telling its own clients, partners and followers that the People's Choice ballot is open during September and where to find it. That kind of support is the same one a firm would give any public award, and it carries no promise about the result.

Paid outside help is a separate question, and the chapter has not answered it on the page. Any firm weighing a paid option should read the service overview and check the chapter's rules before spending anything. The guide to getting more votes online covers the methods that apply to a public ballot of this kind.

No service can guarantee an award in a public design vote. The firm with the strongest showing is usually the one whose own network already knows about the ballot and finds it easy to vote on. Keeping the firm's project page current on the chapter's submissions listing also helps a visitor who follows a link to the ballot find accurate details about the work.