The winners of the 2011 Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Awards were announced at the U.S. Green Building Council's Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, showcasing excellence in holistic retrofitting projects from around the world. Zerofootprint Founder and CEO Ron Dembo made the announcement during his breakout session on energy benchmarking and the importance of improving our older, existing stock of urban buildings to fight climate change. 

The 2011 competition was run in partnership with the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.  

Winners were chosen by a jury of experts in architecture, design, and engineering: Canadian architect John Patkau; Edward Mazria, Architecture 2030 Challenge founder; Thomas Auer, energy efficient building design expert; Michael Ra, Front Inc. founding partner; Michelle Addington, Yale Architecture professor; and Dana Cuff, UCLA Architecture professor and Founding Director of sustainable urban design think tank CityLAB.

"The Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Awards is certainly a significant competition since re-skinning will become the most important design task for the next decades - if we want to seriously reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," says juror Thomas Auer. "The quality of the submissions had been very exciting, technically as well as aesthetically, which underlines the potential and importance of re-skinning."

The Palms, a house in Venice, California designed by Daly Genik Architects, won the prize for Best Overall Project 2011. The most notable feature of The Palms is a sheer white exoskeleton made from locally sourced recycled steel, which transformed the look of the house and significantly expanded the outdoor living space without increasing the site's footprint.

"The Palms is an outstanding example of an architecture project that can transform our cities to fight climate change," says Ron Dembo. "The design is energy and water efficient, replicable, and beautiful. This project demonstrates that re-skinning existing buildings to reduce their environmental impact does not have to mean limiting the quality of materials, the use of smart technologies, or the aesthetics of the final product."

The 2011 Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Awards winners and finalists are:

Best Overall Entry 2011:

• The Palms, Venice, California, Daly Genik Architects

Residential Category

• Winner - The Palms, Venice, California, Daly Genik Architects

Institutional Category:

• Winner - HKWBuilding, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany (iParch, Imagine Envelope)
• Finalist - Centre for Justice Leadership, Humber College, Toronto, Canada (Gow Hasting Architects)
• Finalist - Artscape Wynchwood Barns, Toronto, Canada (du Toit Architects Ltd.)
• Finalist - Percy Gee Building, University of Leicester, Leicester, England (Shepheard Epstein Hunter)  

Commercial/Industrial Category

• Finalist, Honorable Mention for Community Benefits - King and King Headquarters, Syracuse, New York (King and King Architects)
• Finalist, Honorable Mention for Resource Efficiency -  21 Queen Street, Auckland, New Zealand (Peddle Thorpe Aitken)
• Finalist, Honorable Mention for Reproducibility - Ergo Tower, Milan, Italy (Aste and Finzi Architetti)
• Finalist, Honorable Mention for Innovative Technology - First Canadian Place, Toronto, Ontario(B+H Architects, Moed de Armas and Shannon)
• Finalist, Honorable Mention for Aesthetics and Community Benefits - Orange Cube, Lyon, France (Jakob + MacFarlane)