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Money isn’t everything. Intelligence is also required. Julia King, laureate of a LafargeHolcim Next Generation prize for Asia Pacific in 2011, advocated a sanitation strategy for New Delhi’s poorest neighbourhoods. Based on a survey painstakingly carried out in the most deprived streets of India’s capital, this young English architect prioritized the expectations of each individual, in addition to identifying the technical problems as well as the legal obstacles.

The issue of water management, particularly in underequipped urban areas, is a crucial one for Mexico City. Jointly coordinating a team from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Loreta Castro Reguera and Manuel Perló Cohen developed an innovative approach. This program works to integrate public space and light hydraulic infrastructures, thereby offering an alternative to the usual strategies, a proposal that won the LafargeHolcim Awards Gold for Latin America in 2017, and the Global Award Gold in 2018.

Desire is a powerful mobilizer – sometimes stronger than duty or responsibility. If products and buildings that reduce the material cost of building are desirable, they are more likely to catch on with a wider public. Adding beauty, convenience, or novelty to a project can help transform sustainability from something that subtracts to something that adds.

The LafargeHolcim Awards boost designs which might be radical, new, difficult, original or untried says architecture critic Edwin Heathcote in a special issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (AA).

There are design competitions which call for solutions to a brief and then there are competitions which pit already completed projects against each other. But, arguably, the most useful competitions, the ones which can have the most impact globally with relatively minimal means, are those which recognise the originality and interest in a project which is already in the ether and which give it the impetus to become reality.

Recognizing the critical importance of encouraging the future generation of industry professionals, the LafargeHolcim Foundation supports promising talents on various levels. While the LafargeHolcim Awards competition enables students and young professionals to challenge their approaches against their peers, the Foundation’s invitation to participate at the Forum makes the experts of tomorrow a part of today’s debate. Marion Gelinas and Emily Kazanowski, graduate students in the MArch program at The University of British Columbia (UBC) from Vancouver, Canada, share their experience of travelling to Cairo for the LafargeHolcim Forum, and presenting their work to the international community. 

A special issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (AA) brings together almost 50 experts affiliated with the LafargeHolcim Awards. The professional magazine renowned for its critical look at architecture and urbanism highlights why it is worthwhile participating in architectural competitions. They boost projects, careers, and networking opportunities.

The LafargeHolcim Awards seeks leading projects of professionals as well as bold ideas from the Next Generation that combine sustainable construction solutions with architectural excellence. The 6th cycle of the international competition is open for entries until February 25, 2020. The Awards offers a total of USD 2 million in prize money and foregrounds projects and concepts from architecture, engineering, urban planning, materials and construction technology, and related fields.

The city is a rich material resource. There is, for example, more copper in buildings than is left in the earth’s crust. In Switzerland, the total copper stock in buildings is 65kg per person. By reusing the materials already deposited in our settlements rather than extracting new raw materials, the rate of material accumulation would slow down and the amount of building materials removed and redeposited as waste would be reduced.

The latest LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction in Cairo was also attended by top managers of the Group. “It is key for us to engage and discuss with all stakeholders of society where construction and building materials will go in the future,” says Jan Jenisch, LafargeHolcim CEO and member of the Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation, in a five-minute video that breaks down questions and findings of the symposium dedicated to “re-materializing construction” that are relevant to the cement and concrete industry.

Visionary environmental thinker Michael Braungart was honored at the LafargeHolcim Forum 2019 with the first ever Catalyst Award for Sustainable Construction in recognition for his thought leadership on sustainability. The award was presented by LafargeHolcim CEO Jan Jenisch at the LafargeHolcim Forum in Cairo – a conference focused on “Re-materializing Construction” to foreground material stocks and flows in order to further the objectives of sustainable construction.

Marc Angélil and Cary Siress spent far more than 5,000 hours together over more than ten years working on stories that have now been published by Ruby Press Berlin. Mirroring Effects: Tales of Territory features case studies that take readers around the world. The 1,000-page oeuvre was launched at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) where architect Hans Frei praised the authors for “reflecting urban reality to a planetary scale”. The many students in the audience agreed that theory made available in this form can be a tool for thinking and designing beyond all boundaries.

Day Three, the final day, of the 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum commenced with the continuation of the four workshops on themes of Changing paradigms; Shifting the flows, pulling the strings; From manual to digital and vice versa; and Catch 22. Participants then travelled to Tahrir Square Campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC) for the concluding session in historic Ewart Hall, which has been the venue for watershed speeches in modern Egyptian history. Moderators briefly presented the outcomes of their workshops: Werner Sobek, Director, Institute for Lightweight Structures & Conceptual Design, University of Stuttgart; Marilyne Andersen, Full Professor of Sustainable Construction Technologies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL Lausanne); Anna Heringer, Honorary Professor, UNESCO Chair for Earthen Architecture, Constructive Cultures and Sustainable Development; and Harry Gugger, Professor for Architectural & Urban Design, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland.

Day Two of the 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum set sustainable construction in the local context beginning with a keynote address by Laila Iskandar, former Minister of Urban Renewal & Informal Settlements, Egypt and continued with mobile (touring) workshops on the themes of Archeology heritage, Water challenges, New vernacular, and Desert cities.

Day One of the 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum featured keynote speeches by four internationally-renowned “star” architects to an enthusiastic audience of more than 1,200 people. Lord Norman Foster, Foster + Partners, United Kingdom; Christine Binswanger, Herzog & de Meuron, Switzerland; Anne Lacaton, Lacaton & Vassal Architectes, France; and Francis Kéré, Kéré Architecture, Germany explained their approaches to design that embed sustainability even before the first sketch is created.

In less than a month, the 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction will take place in Egypt. The symposium will focus on strategies to “re-materialize” construction by reducing consumption throughout the material cycle from extraction to processing, transport, installation, maintenance, and removal.

The LafargeHolcim Awards Acknowledgement-prize winning One Spadina building of the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design is exemplary for embedding sustainability into the teaching, learning and research programs of the University of Toronto. The renovation and extension of the 1875 Gothic Revival building was designed by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, of NADAAA in collaboration with Architect-of-record Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA. One Spadina officially opened on November 17, 2017.

Coinciding with its centenary, the American University in Cairo (AUC) will host the 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction in early April 2019. The three-day symposium dedicated to “Re-materializing Construction” will bring together 300 specialists from more than 50 countries. It is organized by the LafargeHolcim Foundation with the support of Lafarge Egypt. The announcement took place in the presence of key national media.

Cities are to be intelligent, smart, diverse, bright, open, fluid, connected, safe – in brief: more sustainable. From this starting point, the participants in one of the opening panels of the 4 Design Days (4DD) in Katowice discussed what is next on the journey to achieve “happy cities for happy people” and what role architecture and designers have in getting there.

The main stages of construction for Hyrdropuncture: La Quebradora Water Park in Iztapalapa, Mexico City have been completed. The Global LafargeHolcim Awards Gold 2018 winning project represents a change in the paradigm of water management, and is coordinated by Manuel Perló of the Institute of Social Research (IIS) at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with architect Loreta Castro of Taller Capital. After winning the top LafargeHolcim Awards prize, the project also received the Premio Ciudad for the best architectural intervention of the year for Mexico City in November 2018.

LafargeHolcim Côte d’Ivoire (LHCI) supports young local architects to expand their practical understanding of sustainable construction through a competition run in collaboration with the National Council of Architects in Côte d’Ivoire. The winners receive a six-month internship to work on sustainable construction projects with an experienced architect.