Awarding Excellence:
Thoughts from the California Rebuilds Awards Ceremony
It was thrilling to celebrate the winners of the California Rebuilds Passive House Design Competition last Tuesday evening, November 4th, at the AIA Los Angeles Center for Communities. We acknowledged the winners of the Second and First Place awards across four design categories, as well as the Students’ Choice award and a Special Recognition.
Growing out of the Passive House Network community’s response after the December 30, 2021, Marshall fire in Boulder County, Colorado, it was important to emphasize that the competition awards on Tuesday were not the end of our engagement, but another stop in an ongoing effort to develop resources for greater climate resilience; in California, in Colorado, and across the US.
Growing out of the Passive House Network community’s response after the December 30, 2021, Marshall fire in Boulder County, Colorado, it was important to emphasize that the competition awards on Tuesday were not the end of our engagement, but another stop in an ongoing effort to develop resources for greater climate resilience; in California, in Colorado, and across the US.
The next immediate steps will include publishing a catalog of all the qualifying submissions to make the projects known and available to a wide audience for consideration. We also encourage submission teams to further develop the designs for pre-approval by the City and County of Los Angeles, so that residents can accelerate their rebuilding efforts while locking in Passive House performance.
It’s essential to level set: We can’t fireproof our buildings, but we certainly know how to make them fire-resistant and resilient. As the eminent wildfire scientist Jack Cohen said clearly in the documentary Inside the LA Firestorm – The REAL Story: “What we have is a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.” The building’s envelope and the surrounding landscape are THE key factors of ignition. The Passive House standard’s laser focus on producing a robust enclosure makes it well-suited to not only reduce carbon emissions and help slow our growing climate crisis, but also to help us adapt and ensure our health, safety, and economic security by protecting us and our property from the growing extreme weather – be it heatwaves, polar vortexes, wildfire smoke, or the fire itself.
Our panelist, Stuart Mitchell, an NFPA-certified Wildfire Mitigation Specialist and founder of Wildfire Mitigation Advisors, based in Sonoma County, referenced the documentary ELEMENTAL: Reimagine Wildfire in his remarks, saying we must prioritize our focus and action on each building and then move outward. Tackle what you can control, and in addressing your building and immediate landscape, you can produce dramatic property-saving results.
The panel also featured Aurora Barboza Flores, a high school math teacher who lost her home in Altadena and is rebuilding it to the Passive House standard; LA resident Robin Tung, from the Building Decarbonization Coalition; and Bronwyn Barry, a Passive House architect and principal at Passive House BB in San Francisco. The conversation between regional and national experts highlighted the necessity to decarbonize and build back more resiliently. Ms. Barboza Flores reminded us that collaboration and education are key, sharing her appreciation for the supportive and open Passive House community and the performance qualities her new home will have to keep her safer, healthier, and more comfortable. [See Panelist bios.]
The competition was designed to challenge and inspire, making Passive House more accessible and approachable and redefining our expectations of what Passive House can look like. This was the principal reason behind the design categories: to demonstrate that Passive House does not dictate style – people can choose the style of home they want and still achieve Passive House performance.
We were also pleased to have several jurors in attendance, including Avideh Haghighi, Megumi Hironaka, Chinmaya Misra, DeShawn Samad, Cyril Petit [Meet the Jurors] and student jurors from Glendale High School – below.
At the Awards Ceremony, we finally revealed that a group of high school student jurors, organized by their teacher, Ms. Barboza Flores, had also selected the winner of the Students’ Choice Award. We explained that they attended an in-person assembly in September at Glendale High School about the Passive House concept. Then, in October, like their professional counterparts, the students examined each submission very carefully. First, they evaluated projects individually, and then in larger groupings. Lively debates ensued, with positions taken and challenged before a winner was selected.
Perhaps not surprisingly, no entry hit all the marks perfectly, including the winners, as there are always trade-offs, and particularly in design competitions, there is simply never enough time. However, each jury identified great strengths from project to project, resulting in an amazing variety of winners.
It was a pleasure to have representatives from nearly all of the winning projects at the ceremony, where they could meet each other and attendees, discuss their projects before and after the program, and accept their awards from Jed Donaldson, Chair of Passive House California. See the winning projects and teams.
After the Awards presentation, everyone continued to review the winning submissions and socialize until AIA Los Angeles turned out the lights.
None of this would have been possible without the tireless work and creativity of the submission teams, almost 50 teams in total – we thank all of you. Nor was it possible without the serious efforts of our jurors, supporters, community partners, and the growing and active Passive House community here in California, led by Passive House California, all demonstrating how a global standard of excellence makes perfect sense in LA.
We want to provide additional thanks to Rockwool as our Partner Sponsor and to all of our supporters and partners:
