2018 Race-to-Zero Design Competition

Monday, April 23, 2018

What is the Race to Zero?

The Race to Zero is an annual competition, open to students and faculty from any interested collegiate institution. The fifth annual Race to Zero competition includes a new commercial building design contest in addition to the residential building contests, giving teams many options of building types as the focus of their design challenge.

Picture of the whole team

For this years competition overall there were 84 teams across 8 countries competing across 5 categories for the 2018 Race-to-Zero Design Competition hosted by NREL and the US Department of Energy. University of Waterloo's Warrior Home Team participated in the attached housing, focusing on a redesign of a Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region Home. Within the first year Warrior Home grew to over 50 actively contributing members across 5 engineering disciplines, architecture and environment.

8 chosen teams per category were selected to participate in the final competition at NREL's facility this past weekend in Golden, Colorado. Warrior Home sent 5 students to present our final design and were able to take 1st place in the attached housing category, we were the only international team to take a 1st place finish this year.

Link to competition website: https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/us-department-energy-race-zero-student-design-competition

Link to competition results page: https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/2018-results