News

The 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards for projects and visions in sustainable construction attracted almost 5,000 entries by authors in 121 countries. More than 40% of the projects were submitted in the Next Generation category for students and professionals up to 30 years of age.

The LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction is committed to the underlying principles of sustainability, which assert that long-term development of the built environment requires a balanced interplay of responsible economic, ecological, and social agendas.

The five “target issues” aim to clarify principles for sustaining the human habitat for future generations and serve as criteria for projects submitted for the LafargeHolcim Awards.

A jury of nine experts headed by Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the MIT School of Architecture & Planning, will evaluate entries in the Global phase of the 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards in 2021. The competition is currently open for submissions at the regional level. The USD 2 million Awards seek projects by professionals as well as bold ideas from the Next Generation that foreground design excellence and sustainability in the built environment.

The “Towards a low-carbon urban environment” panel discussions and workshops in Madrid and Barcelona brought together key actors in the construction sector to examine the challenges and responsibility to reduce carbon emissions. Hosted by LafargeHolcim Spain, the workshop commenced with welcome addresses by Isidoro Miranda, CEO of LafargeHolcim Spain who explained the steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions, and Mariano Garcia, Industrial Director of LafargeHolcim who outlined low carbon products and solutions.

The Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has welcomed three new members to further support defining the strategies to encourage innovative approaches to sustainable construction. In addition, the Academic Committee (AC) of the Foundation has been augmented with a new member and a coordinator. The AC is based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich/EPFL Lausanne) and provides support by developing, implementing, and monitoring initiatives of the Foundation.

The LafargeHolcim Awards competition closes at 14:00hrs Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) no matter where you’re located in the world. Registration is open until Tuesday February 25, 2020 (14:00hrs UTC) at that time, it is no longer possible to start a new entry.

There is no charge to enter the LafargeHolcim Awards competition. It’s free – and you can enter as many projects or concepts as you wish, from architecture, engineering, urban planning, materials science, construction technology, and related fields.

We’re incredibly pleased with the level of interest in the LafargeHolcim Awards competition and anticipate a large volume of submissions by the close of entries on February 25, 2020. To enable your entry to stand out during the jury evaluation, make the most effective use of the spaces allocated in the online entry form – it’s important to make each element count. Keep your eye on the details and make sure you include specifics, avoid assumptions, and back up your claims.

There’s a new feature in the LafargeHolcim Awards Main Category entry form. For the first time, we’re asking all Main Category entrants to provide a qualitative narrative on CO2 Lifecycle Assessment. Global greenhouse emissions must be significantly reduced in the future, and the LafargeHolcim Awards seeks projects that make a contribution toward this objective.

We’ve tried to keep things simple for you to enter the LafargeHolcim Awards. There are tips (“info” icon in the online entry form) and a detailed Step-by-step guide – but sometimes you might have an additional question. That’s when you need to contact our Helpdesk.

We’d love to hear more about every project entered in the LafargeHolcim Awards, but our jury meetings last only two days. That’s why the text fields in the entry form are short: you need to stay on track and be concise.

With the population growing by 2.6 people per second, by 2050 the world will need twice as many homes, highways, streets, and schools – all kinds of built infrastructure. That will require vast quantities of construction materials and untold emissions of carbon dioxide, both for building new structures as well as heating, cooling, and maintaining them over their lifespan.

The LafargeHolcim Awards competition is truly global. In the 2016/17 entry period, we received entries from more than 120 countries. But to ensure the independent regional juries evaluate all submissions equally – and also enable the LafargeHolcim Foundation to share information about the amazing winning projects – submissions must be completed in English.

Please don’t send us any physical printouts of your entry via post or courier. Only print a copy of your entry in the LafargeHolcimAwards if you wish to keep a physical copy for your own records.

We use the data submitted in the online entry form to generate display books of all entries for the independent regional juries. This allows us to present each submission in a standard layout. Creating the same standard layout for each submission gives each entry an equal opportunity to attract the attention of the jury.

Execution of projects entered in the LafargeHolcim Awards competition may not have started before January 1, 2019. It’s important to understand exactly how the start date is defined. The condition means that physical construction/manufacturing of the project must not have started before January 1, 2019 – but it’s perfectly acceptable for design/research work to have already started before they key date. 

The online entry form includes three texts to explain how your project contributes to sustainable construction. These relatively short texts need to be strongly focused to explain the benefits of your project to the independent regional jury. The statements should refer to the “target issues” for sustainable construction – stay fully-focused so your project stands out from the crowd.

If architecture is a culture of ideas then the way to leverage innovation is to enable cultural exchange, states architecture critic Edwin Heathcote in a special issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (AA).

Because architecture has a tendency to look inwards into its own culture, the kind of networking architects often indulge in so often appears to be curiously within its own boundaries. I was always a little puzzled by this craving for peer recognition, but it does make a kind of sense.

A picture is worth 1,000 words – so it’s worth making the most of the image section of your LafargeHolcim Awards competition entry. Images are an important opportunity to explain your project in a compelling way to the independent regional Awards jury, especially since space for text is limited. The images should focus on the key points of your project and how it responds to the “target issues” for sustainable construction.

Staying focused on the “target issues” for sustainable construction will help your project to stand out in the LafargeHolcim Awards. Make sure you understand how your project most contributes according to the target issues when responding to the “statements on sustainability” in the online entry form.

Our Step-by-step guide is a detailed handbook on how to enter the LafargeHolcim Awards. As the name suggests, the guide explains each of the five steps to complete the online entry form – and further information to help you present your project in the most convincing way.