Winners of the 2025-26 Challenge
The SDI Finals 2026 were held on June 19 – 21 where the finalist teams of the SDI 2025-26 Challenge presented their state-of-the-art net-zero and climate-resilient designs to the Division Jury, composed of experts from the industry. The teams presented their solutions with passive and active strategies to meet the cooling demand and proposed interesting innovations to achieve efficiency.
Division Winners
The finalist teams in each division pitched their projects to the jury in 20-minute presentations. Many teams impressed the jury with their innovative ideas and market-ready designs. Some of the projects that impressed the jury included integration of innovative products and technologies.
Winners
Runners Up
Grand Winner
The Division Winners competed for the grand prize by pitching to the Grand Jury, composed of experts from the real estate and media professionals. The Grand Winner was Team Agniya from the Educational Building Division. Led by Manipal School of Architecture & Planning with Manipal Institute of Technology as the partner institution, the team proposed a promising and investment-worthy net-zero design for Haji Public School, Breswana.
Outstanding Faculty Award
This year SDI recognised three outstanding faculty mentors! They are
Malhar Pansare from Nitte Institute of Architecture
Saurabh Eknath Shinde from COEP Technological University
Prajakta Kulkarni from MKSSS’s Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture for Women
Best Component Model Award
The teams in the Building Challenge made component models for their projects. Component models represent a part of the building, and teams chose which part of their building solution they wanted to build a component model of. The Division jury of each division selected the best component model in that division. This shortlist of teams, then competed for the Best Component Model Awards.
