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The Holcim Foundation has announced the Winners of the Holcim Awards 2014 for North America, the award which recognizes the most innovative and advanced sustainable construction designs. Among the winners are BIG and The Living, with designs which the jury stated showed "sophisticated and multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing the building and construction industry."
There are very few sceptics who would question the importance of increasing sustainability in architecture. The enhanced social value through better living conditions, physical value in a healthier and less-polluted environment, long-term monetary value via reduced operating and maintenance costs, and ethical value through fairness to future generations are self-evident.
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Since 2005 more than 150 projects advancing sustainability of the built environment haven been celebrated in the Holcim Awards as outstanding, innovative and inspiring examples of sustainable construction. Winning a prize in this international competition has sign-posted professional success for the project teams; highlighted sustainability on the public agenda; accelerated tangible change for urban poor; and secured funding for environmental recovery and research. Beyond holding a trophy aloft, the momentum of sustainable construction has continued for the architects behind projects in locations as diverse as Burkina Faso, Spain, India, and Canada.
At a lecture he delivered in April this year at the 4th Holcim Forum 2013 in Mumbai, Pritzker Jury member and Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena approached sustainability from an unconventional angle. The key to achieving the "Economy of Sustainable Construction" (the title of this year's Holcim Forum), Aravena claims, requires two things: "in this generation, more psychiatrists; in the next generations, more breasts."
The Holcim Awards is one of the most significant competitions in its field in terms of reputation and international scope. The fourth cycle of the competition offering a total of USD 2 million in prize money is now open for entries. The competition seeks leading projects from industry professionals and bold ideas from the “Next Generation” that contribute to sustainability within architecture, building, civil engineering, landscape and urban design, as well as construction materials and technologies. Entries must be submitted online at www.holcimawards.org by March 24, 2014.
A secondary school project in Gando, Burkina Faso, a community center project in São Paulo, Brazil, and an urban renewal plan in Berlin, Germany are the winners of the Global Holcim Awards for 2012. These leading sustainable construction projects were selected from 15 finalist submissions by a jury of independent experts led by Enrique Norten. The finalists were the regional Holcim Awards 2011 winning projects that had been selected from more than 6,000 entries in 146 countries.
Selecting the most outstanding projects in sustainable construction from several thousand submissions will be the challenging task of more than fifty leading experts on sustainability. The jury members for the 3rd International Holcim Awards competition include architects Bjarke Ingels (Denmark), Keller Easterling (USA) and Michel Rojkind (Mexico) – all independent experts of international stature engaged in the sustainable development of society, building processes, construction materials, and building projects.
Sustainable development typically looks at the “triple bottom line” of economic, ecological and social factors and has become the Zeitgeist of the industry. In the context of the built environment, innovative and contextual impacts must also be factored into any calculation of sustainability. With such broad elements to be considered, it’s no wonder that exemplary projects in sustainable construction are rarely the work of one single person or profession, but combine the expertise of several fields: architecture, engineering, research, biology and sociology.
The second cycle of the Holcim Awards competition has reached its pinnacle: the top sustainable construction projects out of thousands of submissions from all continents have been selected. THOLChe four winning entries are a river remediation scheme in Morocco, a greenfield university campus in Vietnam, a rural planning strategy in China, and a shelter for day laborers in the USA. A series of prize-handovers will be held at the site of each project to celebrate the winners and their highly-acclaimed examples of sustainable construction.