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The inaugural FOOTPRINT+ Changemaker Awards recognise the people, projects and products delivering measurable change across property.
The awards ceremony will take place from 4-5pm, with drinks on the terrace until 6pm. All Day 2 ticket holders are invited to attend.
The Changemaker Awards recognise projects and people delivering measurable change. The trophies were designed with the same mindset.
Joe Jackson, a London based designer working across product and furniture, was commissioned to create a series of leather pieces in collaboration with Bill Amberg Studio. His approach draws on traditional forming techniques, alongside a developed scoring method that allows the material to guide the final form.
The choice of leather is deliberate. We wanted the trophies to reflect the thinking behind the Changemaker Awards, not just mark the moment. As a by-product, leather already sits within a wider system, and when used well it is durable, repairable and long lasting. It gives the object a sense of permanence that a conventional trophy does not.
Each piece is made by hand. Each piece is completely unique, and that what makes them entirely appropriate.
Groundbreaking ideas rarely fit into neat boxes so our categories are deliberately broad and reach across the entire across the built environment:
Visionary Facade | Influential Fit Out | Creative Structure | Pioneering Retrofit
Smart Digital Tool | Resourceful Material | Inventive Product | FOOTPRINT+ Changemaker 2026
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As owners seek to future-proof portfolios by retrofitting post-war buildings, facade refurbishment is becoming more common. The techniques and technology required to survey, assess, dismantle, upgrade and re-install are complex. Along with challenging aesthetic considerations; it’s a complex issue which project teams are addressing with vigour.
The judges enjoyed seeing where the most creative, inventive and resilient solutions to date have come to fruition worldwide.
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The carbon-intensity of fit out is of interest to both asset owners and their new occupiers, ‘What can we reuse?’ should be a common question at initial project meetings. Consumer society encourages 'new' as reflected in leases requiring a return to bare shell between tenants. To challenge this, clients, designers, de-construction teams, fit out contractors and commercial property lawyers are working together to achieve more reuse than ever.
The Influential Fit Out award recognises the company rising to meet this challenge.
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Remodelling buildings can allow densification of existing sites and increase of lettable floor-areas, itself an enabling factor in projects which invest to improve energy efficiency. Structural assessment and modification are critical to the delivery of such schemes.
Judges of the Creative Structure award were looking for the creative re-use of basements, the addition of lightweight upper storeys, or any kind of innovative structural gymnastics in between.
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Climate resilience in the built environment requires refurbishment. The deep retrofit of assets creates opportunities to reimagine how buildings function to meet the needs of modern occupiers. How should the diverse needs of the modern building be achieved balancing embodied and operational carbon impacts?
The Pioneering Retrofit award recognises an artfully resolved balance between sometimes competing objectives.
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A resilient and environmentally-responsible property sector depends on data; from calculations about materials to in energy use, from air quality to occupier behaviour. Digital tools allowing asset managers and designers to understand how buildings function in the real world are critical to future gains.
The Smart Digital Tool award is for a tech solution making the biggest impact across the sector.
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Whether coming from the mineral or organic world, new construction materials can offer improved sustainability and performance. Carbon- or energy-efficient, innovations could also focus on advanced properties such as strength or recyclability.
The Resourceful Material award recognises a material either in development or new to market that has the biggest potential to change the status quo.
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Here we aren’t talking digital, we’re talking tangible. From a photovoltaic panel to a desk fan, we’re looking for clever. It doesn’t have to be in production yet; but we want an idea which people will talk about on the way home. It needs to relate to challenges posed by the environment, be it weather or social.
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The FOOTPRINT+ Changemaker 2026 award will recognise the person who achieved the most incredible change in 2025. Who are the people driving change in their industry and working above and beyond? Who are those who embark on something extraordinary in reducing climate impact or improving climate resilience in the built environment?
