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Regarding water, Mexico City is struggling with a paradoxical situation: On one hand, there is a shortage of drinking water – and on the other, torrential downpours flood the streets every year. Parque Hídrico Quebradora is designed to usher in a new era of water management.

To get its guests including more than 50 young professionals and students from 25 countries in mood for the Global LafargeHolcim Awards hand-over in Mexico City, the LafargeHolcim Foundation and colleagues from Holcim Mexico organized a visit to a construction site that seems to break all records. At a cost of USD 14 billion, the new international airport for Mexico City is expected to begin operations by 2020, almost doubling the current capacity to 75 million passengers annually through its main terminal, 96 gates and three concurrent runways.

More than 50 young architects and engineers participated in the international LafargeHolcim Next Generation Awards Lab hosted by Universidad Iberoamericana (IBERO) in Mexico City. Representing 25 countries, the young professionals exchanged experiences and ideas on the future of sustainability in building and construction. Introductory lectures by acclaimed Mexican architects Tatiana Bilbao and Michel Rojkind, and IBERO Director of Architecture, Urbanism & Civil Engineering, José Luis Gutiérrez, inspired the participants. Three project teams each received a two-year LafargeHolcim Research in Practice Grant of USD 75,000 based on the evaluation of their project at the Lab.

The winning projects of the Global LafargeHolcim Awards 2018 from Mexico, Niger and the USA showcase how innovation in design, construction, and materials deliver sustainable infrastructure that excels in social, ecological, and economic performance. The competition’s top prizes were handed-over in Mexico City, where the Gold winning project is under construction and reiterates the importance of water as a resource in urban contexts.

As part of the Global LafargeHolcim Awards handover program in Mexico City, guests were invited to visit the main winning project – a publicly accessible water retention and treatment complex “La Quebradora.” Among the participants was Lia Leutenegger, a student from Switzerland, who summarizes her experience as follows.

More than 50 young architects and engineers participated in the international LafargeHolcim Next Generation Awards Lab hosted by Universidad Iberoamericana (IBERO) in Mexico City. Representing 25 countries, they exchanged experiences and ideas on the future of sustainability in building and construction. The students and professionals were inspired by introductory lectures by internationally renowned Mexican architects Tatiana Bilbao and Michel Rojkind, and IBERO Director of Architecture, Urbanism & Civil Engineering José Luis Gutiérrez Brezmes.

The energy and raw materials used to create a building are substantial, so finding ways to extend building life or reuse materials are becoming a critical element of the sustainability of design. The architects reused a pavilion from Expo15 in Milan as a school where no permanent structures are permitted. The intervention greatly improves the living conditions in a refugee settlement in Lebanon.

Sim Choon Heok and Richard Hassall of WOHA received a Global Finalist 2018 certificate for “Floating University”, on behalf of Mun Summ Wong, main author of the project. The 2017 Awards winning design for BRAC University’s new campus in Dhaka, Bangladesh, remediates a neglected area that has become a heavily polluted sewage dump, and opens it back up to residents of the city. The approach allows both the university and the public to inhabit the site. The low-tech design of the 13-storey university campus for 10,000 students rises above a drainage basin that is to become a healthy, natural lake. The certificate was handed over by Edward Schwarz, General Manager of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

A large university campus is being created in Dhaka, using a low-tech approach that is bringing new modernity to the region. The site is polluted swampland that’s being transformed into a revitalized lake that will also serve the public as a recreational amenity.

Water management is a problem but not a top priority in many of Brazil’s major cities. Typically, there are more pressing problems to be solved, and budgets are notoriously limited. For these and other reasons, the authors are using a low-tech approach that can be implemented quickly and easily for their Água Carioca project.

Thanks to strong public support and the establishment of a government committee, an urban swimming pool in the Spree River in central Berlin has taken two steps closer to reality.

“Flussbad Berlin” – the Global LafargeHolcim Awards Bronze 2012 prize-winning urban plan by Jan and Tim Edler will provide a public urban recreation space adjacent to the UNESCO World Heritage site, Museuminsel (Museum Island), for both residents and visitors.

How do you get people to make use of books? By bringing the books to them. And by building libraries that attract people like a magnet. With its concept of micro libraries, the architects demonstrate how this is done – in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world.

In the middle of an informal settlement near Mumbai there is a children’s home. Its residents have to cope with all the typical local problems, including the harsh climate, dilapidated buildings, and cramped space. The architects impressively address these and various other challenges with the clever and playful design of their new building.

Greenhouses have a very long history of providing microclimates for plants dating back to the Romans. Nevertheless, they can be completely rethought – as evidenced by the very ambitious project for a net zero greenhouse on a college campus.

The Seebaldt Project (TSP) – “Grassroots Microgrid” – is truly a community-driven contribution to brighten the future of residents in the “Comeback City” of Detroit: A picnic party including the entire neighborhood was enabled by the LafargeHolcim Foundation to celebrate the Global Awards Bronze 2018, that was later handed over to the winning team of authors at the Waterview Loft, Port Detroit.

The situation in most informal settlements is out of control: The residents urgently need help to improve their living conditions – but complicated legal issues and diverse interests prevent people from realizing beneficial projects. Resolution and endurance is required, as the project PIPA in Paraisópolis shows.

The LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has released Fifth LafargeHolcim Awards – Sustainable Construction 2017/2018. The 250-page book showcases state-of-the-art approaches to sustainable design that meet societal needs, promote an economy of means and address ecological footprints. Although the projects are diverse in terms of geography, program and scale – they are all the result of true teamwork across generations, genders and ethnicities.

Al Borde Arquitectos from Ecuador are redefining their paradigm on the architects’ role in society and have created a documentary about the practice of the post-crisis generation of young architecture studios. The LafargeHolcim Awards 2014 jury for Latin America praised the young architects based in Quito for their urban revitalization project that draws on the rural tradition of barter. This form of non-monetary exchange enables the refurbishment of housing in the historical center of the city for residents without sufficient monetary means. The project was considered “a promising economic model to literally mine cities rather than nature” by the jury.

Top managers of LafargeHolcim and Holcim Switzerland were introduced to state-of-the-art research on sustainable construction and materials technology across Switzerland at the NEST Building at Empa Dübendorf (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), the Arch_Tec_Lab for interdisciplinary research at ETH Science City in Zurich, the Smart Living Lab of EPFL in Fribourg as well as the Laboratory of Construction Materials EPFL in Lausanne.

The LafargeHolcim Awards Bronze 2017 Europe winning zero carbon ZEDpod is a prefabricated home with a difference. The approach decouples housing provision from land prices by installing the units with “air rights” over car parks, offering almost instant high-quality housing solutions without the land and planning issues associated with a conventional new build.