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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.

Rotterdam-based Ooze Architects was selected as one of six groups to be featured in short films in the Creative Industries Funds annual report. The project of Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg won LafargeHolcim Awards Bronze 2017 Latin America and was praised for creating an active relationship between water management and the community.

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A project to drive long-term community engagement has started to make tangible steps forward in suburban Detroit. The Global LafargeHolcim Awards Bronze 2018 winner aims to improve living conditions in an area emerging from economic decline. The components of the project include solar power generation, rainwater collection and urban farming – which all make the neighborhood more attractive for renters and potential home-owners, thereby building momentum for urban recovery.

A construction materials recycling and logistics hub at the Vergotedok in the heart of Brussels has been completed. The LafargeHolcim Acknowledgment prizewinner from Belgium in 2014 by TETRA architecten was praised for applying sustainability principles to the construction of infrastructure – in a warehouse complex for the trade of building materials in the port of Brussels.

The impressive vaulted Droneport prototype of low-carbon compressed earth and cement Durabric developed by LafargeHolcim is still welcoming visitors at the north entrance to the Arsenale in Venice. Created for the 2016 Architecture Biennale, the structure is symbolic as a gateway to the world’s most significant architecture exhibition.

The LafargeHolcim Foundation website contains a wealth of information on sustainable design – including more than 1,500 web pages, 1,000 documents and 10,000 images. To help make finding the most relevant information easier, our website search engine has been upgraded to improve how you can search for project descriptions and expert profiles, PDFs, images and videos on the LafargeHolcim Foundation website. 

An ambitious project to transform public perceptions of water, and to embed civic amenities into water infrastructure is underway in Mexico City. The Global LafargeHolcim Awards Gold winning project will improve conditions in the dense urban fabric by forming a greenbelt that doubles as water management infrastructure. Hydropuncture consolidates an alternate, decentralized, and sustainable water management system for Mexico City. Work is progressing according to plan. Basic earthworks are completed and the series of terraced platforms and retaining walls of volcanic stones are in place.

Esquimalt Municipal Council has approved a rezoning application enabling the go-ahead of the Corvette Landing development. The building’s 83-units will be in the form of studio and one, two and three-bedroom suites located adjacent to Esquimalt Harbor in the urban area of Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia. The 12-storey mass timber pre-fabricated modular construction will provide affordable homes and won the LafargeHolcim Awards Silver for North America in 2017. The design by Vancouver-based Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture is based on “BC-produced mass-timber technology” using engineered wood products and off-site construction methods.

The Awards Acknowledgement winning project of Kennedy & Violich Architecture has now been completed with ten apartments, studios and penthouses in the urban in-fill development. The building creates a unique identity through its set-back terraced façade that gives out onto the street, its transformation of wrought iron fire escapes into a digitally designed and fabricated screen wall.

Projects in Mexico, Niger, and the USA win the 5th Global LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction. As diverse as the three top projects are in terms of geography, program and scale – they are all the result of true teamwork across generations, genders and ethnicities. Alejandro Aravena (Chile) headed the independent jury of renowned experts who evaluated the 15 finalist projects from all continents that had qualified for the global phase of the Awards. The USD 2 million competition is run by the LafargeHolcim Foundation, an initiative of LafargeHolcim, the leading global building materials and solutions company.

The Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction – an initiative of LafargeHolcim, the leading global building materials and solutions company – will be chaired by Roland Köhler from April 1, 2018. Roland Köhler was a member of the Executive Committee of LafargeHolcim and takes over from Rolf Soiron, founding Chairman of the Foundation since 2003.

Construction of the first of 28 chalice-shaped concrete pillars that will be the eye-catching feature of the 400m long and 80m wide train station concourse in Stuttgart begins. The pillars will support the roof of the underground station and serve as “light eyes”, allowing daylight to enter the hall below. 

Interest was high in the LafargeHolcim Awards poster exhibition in Zurich, Switzerland. All day, the team was busy explaining the programs of the Foundation in general and the global Awards competition in particular. The mix of exhibition visitors – LafargeHolcim employees, competition participants, interested architects, retired engineers, and the next generation of specialists – proved that sustainability is a topic that connects professions and generations.

The third LafargeHolcim Roundtable brought together a panel of international experts to discuss content, choreography, and the potential outcomes from next year’s LafargeHolcim Forum. The meeting aligned workshop leaders in preparing for the international symposium, and built on previous meetings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Endicott House in Dedham-Boston (2014) and ETH Zurich, Werner Oechslin Library in Einsiedeln, Switzerland (2015). The next LafargeHolcim Forum will be held at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt on April 4-6, 2019 – and will focus on “Re-materializing Construction”.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Conservation Centre in Gland, Switzerland is one of the greenest office buildings in Europe. The LafargeHolcim Foundation published a monograph on this exemplary sustainable construction in English and French. This book in the Foundation’s monographic series of exemplary sustainable design has been translated by the Chinese National Commission of UNESCO and is available in a free digital version. 

55 projects from 5,085 submissions received prizes in the regional phase of the 5th International LafargeHolcim Awards competition. On Saturday, March 10, 2018, the project submissions showcasing the state-of-the-art in sustainable construction will be displayed at the Folium, Sihlcity, Zurich in a special exhibition that is open to the public as well as the employees of LafargeHolcim and Holcim Switzerland.

More than 34,000 visitors attended “4 Design Days” – the largest event for the property, architecture, interiors and design market in Central Europe. 300 speakers were invited to Katowice, Poland to examine topics relevant to global trends in architecture and design, including Edward Schwarz, General Manager of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction who was also part of the opening panel.

An event to honor El Salvador’s entrants in the LafargeHolcim Awards competition and their projects in sustainable construction was hosted by Holcim El Salvador. The event featured an exhibition of the 63 submissions from the country, and was complemented with lectures on sustainable construction. In addition, the El Salvador Green Building Council presented selected projects that promote the transformation of the construction market across the “triple bottom line” to achieve better social balance, ecological preservation, and superior economic performance.

“In Brussels, urban development also means keeping production in the city center,” explained Kristiaan Borret, City Architect of the Belgian capital. Instead of moving existing facilities to the outskirts, they are integrated into the developing neighborhoods. Two projects of the Brussels Canal District masterplan received international recognition in 2017 by winning the 5th LafargeHolcim Awards in Europe.

Indonesia has an enviable record when it comes to the LafargeHolcim Awards – and the current cycle has been no exception with an Awards Silver, Acknowledgement prize and Next Generation prize all heading to Indonesia. In addition to a media conference, a forum attended by architects, students and construction professionals illustrated the positive impacts of sustainable design – and raised awareness of the LafargeHolcim Awards competition in the process.