The Cooper Union’s Solar Decathlon team received this year’s highest recognition at the US Department of Energy’s BuildingsNEXT Team Showcase, held at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. The team presented their new construction and retrofit designs for a Hillbridge Academy public school campus, located at the former St. John Villa Academy site on Staten Island.

During a livestreamed ceremony, the Cooper team was awarded an Honorable Mention for “Integrated Design”—the highest distinction given at this year’s event. They were praised for their collaborative work, which “thoroughly explored a variety of technical solutions as part of their design process, incorporated a geothermal system that exceeds cooling needs, and implemented thoughtful and cost-effective methods to reuse the site, structure, and materials for a NYC public school project.”

The Cooper Union was one of four honorable mentions among the 20 teams featured in the Education Building Division of the 2025 BuildingsNEXT Team Showcase. The annual collegiate competition allows students to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams to develop innovative and high-performance building designs that tackle real-world issues such as existing building retrofits, affordability, and resilience. Due to the competition being restructured and rebranded this year, there was no semifinal challenge and no ranked winners.

Melody Baglione, professor of mechanical engineering and an advisor for the Solar Decathlon team, says, “I am especially proud the team was recognized for their ‘Integrated Design’ process and that they continued to work hard on their design despite uncertainty with the competition format this year. I also want to point out how grateful we are to all our design partners, especially the New York City School Construction Authority, who organized a site visit for us and shared an abundance of technical documents with our students, enhancing their learning of professional high-performance building design practices.”

Solar Decathlon is offered at Cooper as part of the Vertically Integrated Projects program with generous support from the IDC Foundation. The team will be sharing their design presentation with the Cooper community as part of this year’s VIP Showcase.