The sustainability category of Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards honors projects that use inventive design to meaningfully reduce harm to the environment. This year’s winner, Applied Underwriters’ Heartwood Preserve, is an Omaha, Nebraska, project that renders stormwater infrastructure into 158 acres of green space and limestone basins that look like public art, reducing wasted energy. See all the honorees below.
Zen House
Minarc
This story is part of Fast Company’s 2025 Innovation by Design Awards. Explore the full list of companies creating products, reimagining spaces, and working to design a better world. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design 2023 More