Nominations have opened for the second annual Zerofootprint Re-skinning Awards, meant to call attention to a lesser-known way for businesses and homeowners to green their buildings.
Much has been written about buildings being built to LEED standards, but the concept of skinning � re-doing the exterior of a building to improve its efficiency and reduce its emissions � is a relatively new concept for most of us.
According to Anna Starasts, spokeswoman for
Zerofootprint, the Spadina Avenue company better known for its sales of carbon offsets, the awards are open to architects, engineers, developers and building owners of "older, energy-inefficient buildings and implemented design solutions to move them closer to a net zero footprint performance."
"The goal of the
awards is to stimulate market-disrupting improvements in the design and development of retrofitting and re-skinning technologies," Starasts says, "That is, let's make retrofitting and re-skinning the usual way in which we build our cities."
Thought he awards are international in scope, last year's residential winner was from Toronto. Known as the
Now House, this WWII-era house was retrofit by Work Worth Doing Studio and Lorraine Gauthier in 2008-2009. The re-skinning resulted in a 70 per cent reduction in energy use.
Nominations close Aug. 31. Last year's winners were presented at the UN
World Urban Forum in Rio.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Anna Starasts
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