CHANGEMAKER AWARDS

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 look forward to seeing where the most creative, inventive and resilient solutions to date have come to fruition worldwide.

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 will recognise the company rising to meet this challenge.

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 are looking for the creative re-use of basements, the addition of lightweight upper storeys, or any kind of innovative structural gymnastics in between.

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 will recognise an artfully resolved balance between sometimes competing objectives. 

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 - it's wide open for any kind of initiative to submit!

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 will recognise a material either in development or new to market that has the biggest potential to change the status quo.

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.

Our judges will be challenged by sorting through a wide spectrum of un-related submissions, but that’s half the fun. Answers on an envelope please.

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?

The judges will be looking for an unusually determined spirit, someone who did not take 'no' for an answer to achieve their goal.