Zerofootprint's Building Re-skinning Awards

We put on sweaters to deal with cold weather and sunglasses to protect us from the sun, so why shouldn't we use the same theories to help the buildings we live and work in to remain comfortable and energy efficient? This is the kind of forward thinking that went into Zerofootprint's latest project, called the Re-Skinning Awards. The basic concept of the project was to design and build a new "skin" over the outer layer of existing buildings that works to reduce the buildings' carbon footprints as well as reduce unnecessary and expensive wastes of energy. This simple sweater-like concept could change the face of old buildings around the world and help all of us live in a cleaner, more eco-friendly environment.

Who Is Zerofootprint?
Aptly named, the Zerofootprint enterprise's mission is to "develop the software, technology, design, and rigorous risk management that together will achieve a massive reduction of our environmental footprint," according to their website. The organization operates in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors of business so as to reach, educate and offer carbon-footprint-reducing solutions to the most people and businesses around the world. The non-profit version is called the Zerofootprint Foundation and the for-profit version is called Zerofootprint Software.

The Zerofootprint enterprise is constantly seeking sustainable ways to reduce global energy waste and to increase energy efficiency. The Re-Skinning Awards encouraged like-minded thinkers in the building industry to add their ideas from various countries all over the world.

What Does It Mean To "Re-Skin" A Building?
Over the past century, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and many more large cities have created carbon footprints that are now negatively effecting climate change at an increasingly dangerous pace. We can track this through the operation of non-energy-efficient buildings that account for a disturbingly large amount of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. The problem is clear: We can't break down and rebuild our cities to be more energy efficient.

We can, however, re-outfit existing buildings to significantly reduce their carbon, energy, and water performance to more sustainable levels. And with Zerofootprint's latest initiative on re-skinning buildings, we can learn to do so with non-invasive techniques that also beautify and update older buildings with "smart" technology. Some of the techniques for re-skinning the outside of non-energy-efficient buildings include adding solar panels, green roofs, wind turbines, hydrogen cells, and ground water heating and cooling systems. Together, these additions reduce older buildings' carbon footprints as well as their need for power generation. Some newly re-skinned buildings can even go off the energy grid with solar power technology.

The Re-Skinning Awards Contest
The Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Awards is a program that began this year to showcase the most successful, holistic and repeatable retrofitting projects of the year. The purpose of the contest is to "stimulate market-disrupting improvements in the design and development of retrofitting and re-skinning technologies," according the website. In other words, Zerofootprint hopes the contest will encourage real, measurable change in efforts toward sustainable energy efficiency on a global scale. The benefits of going green with building exteriors can only be positive, as Zerofootprint writes: "Upgrading our existing inventory of energy-wasting buildings will help reinvent our cities while making them more livable."

The first annual contest winners were announced in March. Five awards were given for different re-skinning categories:

1. Small/Medium Commercial and Overall Winner -Aidlin Darling Architects was the Overall Winner of the 2010 Re-Skinning Contest. The firm also won the Small/Medium Commercial Award for their work with the "355 Eleventh" turn-of-the-century industrial building located in San Francisco, California.

2. Large Commercial -Thiemo Ebbert and a team of highly skilled architects won the Large Commercial Re-Skinning Award for their work with the Sparkasse Vorderpfalz regional bank headquarters building located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. This re-skinned building has improved its energy performance by 64 percent since its completion in 2009.

3. Large Residential - DAHM Architekten and Ingenieure won the Large Residential Re-Skinning Award for their work modernizing the GESOBAU AG apartment building complex originally built in the 1960s in Berlin, Germany. The project is due for completion in 2010, but has already improved its energy performance by 71 percent with the 538 apartments that were converted in 2008 and 2009.

4. Small Residential - Lorraine Gauthier and the Work Worth Doing Studio won the Small Residential Award for designing a re-skinning process called "Now House" in Toronto, Canada, which retrofits older homes to become net zero energy homes. The Now House process was first used on a prototype 60-year-old Toronto house that is similar in layout and footprint to a million other Canadian homes where the process could be easily imitated.

5. The Future of Re-Skinning - The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) won this award for its futuristic-looking proposal for re-skinning the University of Technology Sydney Tower in Sydney, Australia. LAVA's proposal includes a cocoon-like translucent skin that uses photovoltaic cells to create a microclimate for the building inside. The skin could easily be applied to buildings similar in shape and size around the world.

The Re-Skinning Awards will be offered annually as part of Zerofootprint's mission to encourage out-of-the-box green building projects. Submissions are now being received for the 2011 competition. Check out Zerofootprint for more information.

Posted by: Sirena Rubinoff