As the built environment faces a rapidly changing world, the need to rethink how buildings are designed, operated, and renewed has never been more important. For the 2026–2027 Society Year, ASHRAE President Sarah E. Maston calls on the industry to embrace a forward-looking approach through the theme “Changing the Game: Retrofitting for Resilience.”
The theme recognizes that creating a resilient built environment does not always mean starting from the ground up. Across communities around the world, countless existing buildings represent an opportunity to improve performance, strengthen adaptability, and extend service life. Through thoughtful retrofitting, these buildings can respond to evolving environmental conditions, technological advancements, energy demands, and the changing needs of their occupants.
Retrofitting goes beyond simply replacing outdated equipment or improving individual building systems. It presents an opportunity to take a holistic look at how buildings perform and how they can continue to serve their occupants in an uncertain future.
From upgrading HVAC systems and improving energy efficiency to integrating smart controls, enhancing indoor environmental quality, and preparing buildings for extreme weather and changing operating conditions, retrofit strategies can transform existing facilities into more efficient, adaptable, and resilient spaces.
For the HVAC&R community, this challenge presents both a responsibility and an opportunity. Engineers and building professionals play a critical role in identifying practical interventions that balance energy performance, occupant comfort, system reliability, cost, and long-term resilience.
In the Philippines, the importance of resilient buildings is particularly significant. Buildings operate in an environment shaped by tropical conditions, extreme heat, typhoons, flooding, evolving energy demands, and increasing expectations for efficiency and occupant well-being.
Many of the country's existing buildings were designed under conditions and standards that differ from today's challenges. Retrofitting provides a pathway to address these gaps while preserving valuable existing infrastructure.
This calls for collaboration across the built environment: from engineers and architects to contractors, facility managers, owners, manufacturers, policymakers, and other industry stakeholders. By working together, the industry can develop retrofit solutions that are technically sound, economically viable, and responsive to local conditions.
“Changing the Game: Retrofitting for Resilience” encourages the industry to look at existing buildings not as limitations, but as opportunities.
Every retrofit can be a step toward reducing energy consumption, improving system performance, strengthening resilience, and creating healthier indoor environments. More importantly, successful retrofits can demonstrate how the buildings we already have can be adapted to meet the demands of the future.
As ASHRAE continues to advance heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, and building performance, the 2026–2027 Society Theme challenges its members and the broader industry to think beyond conventional solutions and embrace innovation where it matters most.
Changing the game means looking at what already exists, understanding what the future demands, and taking action today to build greater resilience for tomorrow.
Through “Changing the Game: Retrofitting for Resilience,” ASHRAE Philippines joins the global ASHRAE community in advancing a more resilient, sustainable, and future-ready built environment: one retrofit at a time.
