Our design awards celebrate Passive House buildings and designs that are beautiful, climate-specific, and resilient, chosen by juries of architects, engineers, and other experts, including from the Passive House Institute. Here is each one, newest first, with its winners.
On this page: California Rebuilds Design Competition · Climate Design Awards
2025: California Rebuilds Design Competition
Winners announced November 4, 2025 · AIA Los Angeles Center for Communities · with Passive House California · sponsored by ROCKWOOL
After the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, we asked architects and designers for single-family Passive House designs to help Altadena and the Pacific Palisades rebuild: fire-resilient, cost-conscious, designed for aging in place, and in the styles of the neighborhoods that burned. A jury of ten judged the entries on the Passive House Standard, affordability, buildability, aging in place, and style, in four categories: Craftsman, Spanish Colonial Revival, Mid-Century Modern, and Contemporary. A jury of students from Glendale High School chose its own winner.
The qualifying entries, from designers around the world, are in The California Rebuilds Catalog, free to read online: homes of three bedrooms or more on typical local lots, each asked to meet Passive House Classic or higher and California’s fire code for home and landscape hardening, for homeowners and developers choosing a design.
Spanish Colonial Revival
First place
Casa del Consuelo
mossArchitects & bldgtyp
“This is Spanish Colonial in a contemporary way. Clear flow, thoughtful fire barriers in courtyards, Passive House principles are addressed, and good presentation.”
Mid-Century Modern
First place
Indoor Sanctuary, Outdoor Connection
PARAVANT Architects & Home Energy Services
“Moderate size with maximum advantage of indoor/outdoor living.”
Craftsman
First place
ReCraftsman
University at Buffalo Resilient Buildings Lab, Rochester Institute of Technology, & Wendel
“This project strikes a careful balance—preserving Altadena’s familiar scale and character while refining the form and details to meet the future climate needs and Passive House performance.”
Contemporary
Second place
fab_01
Feldman Architecture & Blend Projects
“Nice floorplan and massing.”
The juries
Dragoș Arnăutu (Passive House Institute), Heidi Erm (Building Decarbonization Coalition), Greg D. Fisher (Greg D. Fisher, Architect), Lisa Gralnek, Avideh Haghighi, Megumi Hironaka (HED), Chinmaya Misra (CHINCHIN Design and CHA:COL), Cyril Petit, DeShawn Samad, and Eddy Voltaire (Design Construction & Sustainability).
The Students’ Choice came from a student jury at Glendale High School, led by their math teacher, Aurora Barboza Flores, an Altadena resident rebuilding her own home to the Passive House Standard, after a workshop with us.
- The winners, with the judges’ comments and each team’s own description
- The jury
- Thoughts from the awards ceremony
- The California Rebuilds Catalog
2023: Climate Design Awards
Winners announced October 2023 at the PHN Conference, Denver · sponsored by Wythe Windows
Our first design awards recognized climate-specific Passive House design: buildings and details that answer the needs of their site, climate, and region. Entries were judged by climate, from very hot to arctic, rather than by building type, with an award for an unbuilt design and one for details. Andrew Michler and Bronwyn Barry chaired the awards committee.
Temperate to cool
Flow Chelsea
ZH Architects
“It is hard enough to build anything on a tight New York site, but Flow Chelsea pulls off Passive House with clever details and materials, and nice shades.”
Cold to arctic
The Bridge
OPAL Architecture
“A unique massing and architectural character lending itself very well to PH, with a vast array of benefits.”
Cold to arctic
Hotel Marcel
Becker + Becker Associates
“Becker and Becker preserve the classic Marcel Breuer building and make it a cutting edge, passive house, solar powered, healthy and all-electric modern marvel.”
Unbuilt
Buffalo Crossing
Stantec
“Winnipeg is so cold it is nicknamed Winterpeg, yet, this project will hit Passive House with ‘theatrically opening and closing shutters’, low carbon construction from mass timber…”
Details
Englewood PH Duplex
SHAPE Architecture Studio
“The concern with embodied carbon and the brave use of concrete-free ground floor exemplifies this project mission…”
No winner was selected in the warm to hot category.
The jury
Lloyd Alter, Jessica Grove-Smith (Passive House Institute), Samantha Josaphat-Medina and Luis Medina (Studio 397 Architecture), Marine Sanchez (RDH Building Science), Lindsay Schack (Love|Schack Architecture), and Brad Tomecek (Tomecek Studio Architecture).
Questions about our awards, or interested in supporting the next one? Write to us at info@passivehousenetwork.org. See also our Conferences and Case Studies.
Checked October 2026.
