GlasCurtain travelled to London, UK for the CIBSE Building Performance Awards after being shortlisted in two categories, placing our team alongside some of the world’s largest engineering firms, manufacturers, and research institutions. Organized by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), the awards are often described as the “Oscars” of British engineering and recognize projects and technologies that deliver measurable improvements in building performance, energy efficiency, and occupant comfort.

The most recent edition of the awards saw the highest number of entries in the program’s history, reflecting the growing global demand for buildings that deliver stronger energy performance, improved comfort, and lower environmental impact. Engineers, architects, manufacturers, and research teams from around the world submitted their work, making the shortlist an impressive cross-section of the international building performance community.

For a Canadian curtain wall manufacturer focused on high-performance façade systems, being recognized within this group reinforced that the work being done here in Canada contributes meaningfully to broader discussions around energy performance, façade durability, and embodied carbon in the built environment.

The awards bring together leaders working across building science, mechanical engineering, materials research, and architecture. As building codes evolve and climate targets become more ambitious, the conversation around building performance continues to expand, from operational energy and occupant comfort to the growing importance of embodied carbon in construction materials.

Two GlasCurtain Systems Recognized

GlasCurtain was shortlisted in two categories at this year’s awards.

Our Thermaframe 4 system was recognized in the Embodied Carbon Award category, where it received the “Highly Commended” distinction from the jury — the “Silver Medal” result! Notably, this recognition was not awarded in every category, which made the acknowledgement especially meaningful for our team. For this recently launched low-carbon curtain wall system, the recognition marks our most significant award to date.

The category itself reflects a rapidly growing focus within the building industry. While operational energy has long been a central focus of building performance, attention is increasingly turning to the embodied carbon of building materials, particularly within façade systems where aluminum framing and multi-layer glazing can contribute significantly to a building’s overall carbon footprint.

Our double-glazed Thermaframe 4 system was developed specifically to address this challenge! By replacing conventional aluminum framing with fibreglass framing, the system dramatically reduces the carbon intensity associated with the frame itself. Fibreglass also provides inherently lower thermal conductivity than aluminum, helping improve the overall thermal performance of the façade.

The system further reduces embodied carbon by eliminating the third lite of glass typically required to achieve similar performance levels. This allows the façade to maintain strong thermal performance — approximately R-4 overall (frame and glass), while reducing the material footprint of the assembly, saving capital cost, and reducing installation labour / equipment. The result is a curtain wall system designed for temperate climates that balances carbon reduction, durability, and thermal efficiency without adding complexity for designers, fabricators, or installers.

In a sector where façade performance often requires increasingly complicated assemblies, Thermaframe 4 demonstrates that meaningful carbon reductions can also come from simplifying the system itself — a design approach that helped place the system among the most recognized innovations in this year’s awards.

Peter and Sean dressing to impress!

Recognition for Thermal Comfort in Cold Climates

GlasCurtain’s Thermaframe 9 PH system was also shortlisted as a finalist for Product or Innovation of the Year – Thermal Comfort. The category recognizes technologies that improve indoor environmental conditions, reflecting the growing importance of occupant comfort within the broader conversation around building performance.

Designed specifically for cold-climate environments, Thermaframe 9 PH focuses on maintaining stable interior surface temperatures across the façade. The system is also the world’s first and only curtain wall certified by the Passive House Institute to the Cold Climate criteria, achieving R-9 overall thermal performance for the complete frame and glazing assembly (0.67 W/m²·K per NFRC, 0.60 W/m²·K per EN 673).

In northern climates, condensation remains one of the most persistent challenges facing architects and engineers designing highly glazed buildings. When interior surfaces fall too close to the dew point, condensation can occur, affecting both occupant comfort and long-term building durability. By reducing thermal bridging and maintaining warmer interior surfaces, Thermaframe 9 PH helps limit that risk while improving comfort for occupants near perimeter glazing. These characteristics are becoming increasingly important as buildings incorporate larger areas of glass and pursue ambitious energy targets.

Thermaframe 9 PH stood out in a field largely made up of mechanical engineering innovations, HVAC technologies, and building performance tools. Its shortlisting highlights the important role façade systems play in maintaining interior comfort and environmental stability. With a record number of entries submitted to this year’s awards, the recognition was an encouraging moment for our team and a reminder that the challenges of designing for northern climates, and the solutions developed to address them, continue to gain attention on the international stage.

Table mates (and new friends) XCO2 taking home Gold in their category. Bravo!

Exploring London’s Built Environment

Beyond the awards ceremony at the Park Plaza Hotel, the trip also offered the chance to explore one of the world’s great cultural cities.

We spent time at the Warburg Institute, where we explored The Library of Exile, an installation by Edmund de Waal that reflects on the idea of language as migration through a collection of translated works written in exile.

At Tate Modern, we visited the exhibition Theatre Picasso, which looks at Picasso’s work in stage design and performance and traces how his ideas moved between art, theatre, and other disciplines.

The Natural History Museum offered a completely different perspective on time. Among the dinosaur exhibits, we even came across fossil discoveries from GlasCurtain’s backyard in Red Deer River Valley, Alberta, Canada — a fun reminder that the landscapes we know from home are part of a much larger geological story.

At the British Museum, we stopped to see the Rosetta Stone, one of the most famous artifacts in the world and the key that ultimately allowed scholars to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

We also made our way to Oxford, walking through historic colleges and courtyards that have evolved over hundreds of years and reflect centuries of learning and academic life.

Trips like this are a reminder that ideas, knowledge, and cultural exchange move across borders and generations. The same is true in the world of building performance, where innovation often grows through shared learning and collaboration across disciplines and regions!

Building Performance as a Global Effort

Experiences like the CIBSE Building Performance Awards reinforce that building performance is ultimately a global effort with many regional contributors. Different regions bring different climates, materials, and engineering approaches to the work, yet the shared objective remains consistent: creating buildings that perform better, last longer, and support the people who use them every day.

For GlasCurtain, being recognized at the CIBSE Awards represents an encouraging milestone, and a reminder that the work happening within Canada’s building science and façade innovation community continues to resonate internationally.

As demand for higher-performing, lower-carbon buildings continues to grow, collaboration between architects, engineers, and manufacturers will remain essential. The challenges facing the built environment are complex, but they are also shared, and the solutions are increasingly emerging through collective innovation across disciplines, regions, and climates.

The conversations, ideas, and partnerships that bring the industry together at events like CIBSE help move that progress forward, ensuring the next generation of buildings performs better for the communities that depend on them!