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The highlight of 2020 for the Foundation should have been the regional LafargeHolcim Awards. However, the face-to-face jury meetings and the prize hand-over ceremonies in five regions of the world had to be cancelled. What’s next for the competition? Edward Schwarz provides information.

For the first time, the jury meetings for the LafargeHolcim Awards were held virtually. One of the biggest challenges was that the jury members were located in many different time zones.

Construction of the LafargeHolcim Awards winning net-zero energy greenhouse at Wellesley College, USA was completed in 2019. Sustainable design is at the very core of the structure, form, and system – meeting sustainability metrics as a matter of course and then goes much further to achieve a virtuosity of integration. The Global Flora conservatory at the Margaret C Ferguson Greenhouses will open to the general public when renovation of the Science Center is completed, planned for early 2022. More than 1,000 varieties of plants are housed in the bio-friendly greenhouse – and are showing signs of handling the transition well.

To mark World Water Week 2020, we celebrate LafargeHolcim Awards Next Generation winners – with a focus on design solutions for climate change and water issues.

A global discourse on materials must address the issue of the harvesting and repurposing of waste. Traditional waste management systems in the Global South are embedded in realities that are often too complex for systems based on the European model to understand. These informal, socially constructed systems are difficult for city planners to accommodate because they developed from the needs and realities of urban inhabitants and were not determined or implemented on a governmental level. They derive from the residents’ knowledge of informal markets and trading systems and provide the most destitute segments of society with incomes, livelihoods, trades, occupations, and economic growth opportunities that other sectors do not provide.

To speak about the materials of construction, as a designer, is to take into account the context of the materials. Starting with history: it’s been said that if you want to look far into the future, first look far into the past. History is inseparable from place. Sustainability, similarly, is inseparable from nature.

For each region of the world, nine jurors spent two to three days reviewing submissions and selecting the best projects and visions in sustainable construction. The expertly managed process nominates the potential winners and runners-up in the 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards competition. A multi-step verification process must confirm the winners now which will be communicated in 2021. Physical jury meetings and prize hand-over events had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The well-known triad of environment, economy, and society depicts the many dimensions of sustainability in an understandable yet complex way. Architects must plan buildings – and cities – where people feel comfortable, find their manifold needs satisfied, and treat others with respect. As its needs evolve, a community must be able to identify with, take care of, and reuse buildings and cities instead of tearing them down. How long does a structure need to last? How easily can it be repurposed?

Making do is about using what we already have. It is about considering the existing as a valuable resource, not as unsatisfactory or constraining. Each existing situation is an opportunity consisting of elements, qualities, and capacities that can be integrated, reactivated, and reused. Each existing structure offers materials that can drastically reduce the need for new materials. Each site permits invention and imagination.

Water is a vital resource for all life, yet it is also associated with many of the greatest threats to humanity, from melting ice caps to toxic rivers. A holistic approach to water management can be an emblem for a culture of sustainability. 

Chennai currently works with a perception of scarcity – water is transported across long distances from unsustainable sources to nourish the city. India’s fourth most populous urban agglomeration receives more than enough rain to supply its population of almost ten million people, but the rainwater is quickly expelled into the sea. Wastewater is not reused as an asset; but is allowed to pollute the aquifer. By closing the water loop locally through rainwater harvesting and wastewater recycling, Chennai can become resilient.

Hydropuncture: La Quebradora Waterpark in Mexico City is about to open. Supplying enough clean drinking water on the one hand and mitigating urban flooding on the other is a problem that is as commonplace as it is paradoxical in Mexico City. A project to tackle both infrastructural and social challenges of urban water management is already a success story – because for a long time it seemed it would be stopped, mainly by bureaucratic hurdles.

Ever since the industrial revolution, the global economic system has been based on a single linear pattern: the “take – make – throw” model. Companies manufacture products using harvested or extracted materials and consequently sell them to consumers who – once the products are broken, old, or out of fashion – dispose of them, including all their embedded raw materials, water, energy, and knowledge.

To break this pattern, there must be a paradigm shift in the underlying approach, one that will radically change our economic and ecological understanding and decouple economic growth and resource consumption: a shift from a linear to a circular economy.

Evaluating projects in a virtual meeting across up to five time zones and continents is a new experience for many members of the regional LafargeHolcim Awards juries. The panels that are usually physical meetings hosted by associated universities of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction are being replaced by multi-day online sessions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Is the idea of building more with less a Utopia? Maybe. But to me, it’s the key to our future and a challenge we must urgently address. We must all tackle the social, economic, and environmental problems created by population growth, migration, climate change, and dwindling supplies of resources. How do we do this? By building differently and by reforming a construction industry that is famously resistant to change while creating a built environment that requires significantly less material.

How will the Covid-19 pandemic affect the built environment? Will we have to rethink concepts such as urban densification – or will we simply return to “business as usual” once the crisis abates? Experts from the network of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction from around the globe share their views.

In his capacity as member of the Academic Committee of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction since 2014, Philippe Block has been instrumental in realising exemplary projects and in leading debates to promote and enhance sustainability in how and with which materials we build. Philippe Block is Professor of Architecture and Structure at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland and was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of LafargeHolcim Ltd at its Annual General Meeting 2020.

The ability to grow synthetic wood, open cell foams, and leather analogs is only a small demonstration of what mushroom materials are capable of. Our knowledge of mushrooms is fractured between different industries, areas of expertise, and histories of study. In this new field of applied materials, there is an urgent need for basic measurements and standardized physical parameters at the microscopic level. If we are to fully understand this emerging area of husbandry, it’s going to require significant investment – as well as smart people focused on thinking about rotten things.

To promote the health and well-being of communities, LafargeHolcim – sponsor of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction – is implementing an extraordinary range of measures at country level. Everyone has their part to play in the fight against the Coronavirus (Covid-19), from big to small.

The 21st century needs to face a radical paradigm shift in how we produce materials for the construction of our habitat. While the first industrial revolution resulted in a conversion from regenerative (agrarian) to non-regenerative material sources (mines), our era may experience the reverse – a shift toward cultivating, breeding, raising, farming, or growing future resources that goes hand-in-hand with a reorientation of biological production methods and goals.

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.