3 June 2025 - The final of the Healthy Buildings Design Competition took place at CLIMA 2025 where the three teams presented their projects to the jury members.
As part of its ongoing commitment to a healthier and more sustainable built environment, REHVA continues to empower the next generation of engineers, architects, and designers. At the heart of this mission is the Healthy Buildings Design Competition, first launched in 2022 to encourage innovation among students of these fields.
The second edition of the competition concluded at the CLIMA World Congress 2025 in Milan withthe challenge of the renovation of a primary school built during Europe’s post-war baby boom era (1960s–1970s). The focus was to place children’s well-being at the core of their design strategies. Emphasizing a balance between health, environmental impact, and economic feasibility, the competition attracted strong proposals from university teams across Europe.
Evaluation by the international jury members
The finalist teams were invited to present their renovation project in front of an international, multidisciplinary jury.
The presentations demonstrated impressive levels of technique and creativity, offering comprehensive approaches to transforming school environments into safe, inspiring, and futureproof spaces.
The jury members, chaired by Atze Boerstra, knew how challenging it would be to appoint the winner of this edition. “The top student teams developed truly innovative solutions. Their designs went beyond out-of-the-box HVAC approaches, placing the future needs of students and teachers at the heart of their concepts” expressed Atze Boerstra before the final.
After tough deliberation, the jury faced the difficult task of selecting a winner among the three high-quality submissions.
And the winners are…
We are proud to announce that the Mindful Retrofitters have been crowned winners of the Healthy Buildings Design Competition 2025. They went home with a 5.000€ prize. Check out their poster.
The Dutch team, composed of four students from Delft University of Technology, brought together diverse expertise in architecture and building technology. This international and interdisciplinary team is composed of Gaspard Marteau, Catalina Marina Persunaru, Alejandro Mendiola De la Peña, and Sana Hafsa, respectively from France, Romania, Mexico, and India.
The students combined their interests in passive, circular design strategies, smart systems balancing energy and resource consumption, as well as material innovations and community empowerment, to create this winning project: “The blend of this wide variety of interests resulted in a unique approach to our proposal, which integrates users’ well-being and learning into each aspect of the technical renovation” explains the teams.
Their project stood out for its user-centric approach, integrating the children's physical and emotional well-being into every layer of the renovation. Their concept reflected a thoughtful balance of technical performance, sustainability, and social impact, all tailored to the context of a typical Milanese primary school. The jury members also greatly appreciated the team's playful presentation.
Second place
The second place was awarded to a team of students in exchange at TU Delft from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) and the University of Bath (UK). They received a prize of 3.000€.
Matteo Bourdin, Pierre Curci and Aayush Saraf have backgrounds in landscape architecture and its relationship to climate, psychological and emotional connection to climate, and sustainable construction techniques as well as environmentally positive energy systems. “Renovation is also a key concern for us, given its importance in the European context and the urgent need to find scalable solutions that pave the way toward a healthier built environment.”
Check out their poster.
Third place
Cracovian One went home with the third place and 2.000€. The team brings together students from the Faculty of Energy and Fuels at AGH University of Krakow and the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at Cracow University of Technology, creating the perfect combination of skills for working on building modernization.
Check out their poster.
Acknowledgements
REHVA extends its sincere gratitude to SMAY Ventilation Systems, whose generous sponsorship made this edition of the Healthy Buildings Design Competition possible. We also thank the jury members for their time, expertise, and commitment to support young talent in sustainable building design.
Thank you to all the students who participated in the competition!
