News

Sustainability in building is rapidly gaining significance in the Middle East Africa region – particularly among female professionals and young graduates in architecture and engineering. This was clearly seen at the prize-handover ceremony for the regional LafargeHolcim Awards in Nairobi, Kenya. The majority of the 12 prize-winning projects dealt with education and the contemporary promotion of traditional manual skills.

An impressive number of Kenyan and international journalists attended the media briefing following the prize handover ceremony of the LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction in region Middle East Africa.

The first LafargeHolcim Building Better Recognition Middle East Africa goes to Kéré Architecture, Berlin, Germany, for “Secondary school with passive ventilation system,” a project that earned the Global LafargeHolcim Awards Gold 2012. The jury was impressed by its “beauty and innovative architectural concept and example for new sustainable construction from a materials and technology perspective.” Today, the secondary school is reality for hundreds of children and standing the test of time.

This is the story of Élodie, Ductal and Airium – a testimony of how LafargeHolcim embraces sustainability and innovation. So the world builds better. Wearing appropriate protection equipment, Élodie pours Ductal into a mold of acrylic glass. Making a base for the LafargeHolcim Awards trophy requires skill, patience, and stamina. The result, a rectangular block with a perfectly smooth surface is also a great source of satisfaction and pride for Élodie.

The latest issue of “Foundations” is online, with features dedicated to the 5th cycle of the regional LafargeHolcim Awards. Sarah Nichols and Marc Angélil set foot on five continents to represent the LafargeHolcim Foundation at each of the regional LafargeHolcim Awards jury meetings. Entries must stand out to get nominated for a prize, they conclude, “and for that you must deliver truly special results.”

LafargeHolcim Awards Global Gold winner Francis Kéré continues to create work that lives up to the “target issues” of sustainable construction and captures international imagination. His Serpentine Pavilion has opened in London, with a design that reflects on the role of a tree as meeting point in his hometown of Gando in Burkina Faso.

Architecture Snob and the LafargeHolcim Foundation were invited by renowned German architect Jürgen Mayer H. to explore their experiences of “Communicating Architecture” at the 10th conversation on “Curating Architecture” at Soho House Berlin, Germany. After the two-hour session, the audience had not just met two organizations but two individuals: Marcin Szczelina from Warsaw, and Edward Schwarz from Zurich.

Prof. Guillaume Habert will present a special guest seminar at the University of Melbourne on Monday July 1, 2017 at Engineering-106 (Brown Theatre). The Chair of Sustainable Construction at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) is in Melbourne for the LafargeHolcim Awards jury meeting for Asia Pacific, held at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD) over the weekend.

The LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction gives many projects the boost to achieve realization and is part of countless success stories being written by aspiring and established professionals. A prize in the competition opens new doors for many of the winners, like the Spanish architect Carlos Piles: thanks to two prizes from the LafargeHolcim Foundation, he has made an exciting step in his career – to LafargeHolcim!

A heavy snowfall in the Spanish town of Cehegín caused a landslip that destroyed a cluster of houses on a steep embankment in the old quarter. The area was not repaired and became known as “El Coso”. Little by little, the area deteriorated even further and interrupted the flow of adjacent streets, while the townsfolk created ad hoc paths to traverse the urban void.

Considering current debates on the possible erection of a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico, the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction would like to draw attention to an essay by urban geographer Michael Dear on the historical development of the borderland between the two countries – also against the backdrop that members of the Board of the Foundation consider the project to be profoundly unsustainable.

The 5th International LafargeHolcim Awards competition for projects and visions in sustainable construction closed at the end of March 2017. From a total of 5,085 entries by authors in 121 countries, 70% are valid and will be examined by independent juries in five world regions. The winners will be announced in the fourth quarter of the year, where seven Main Awards and four Next Generation prizes carrying a purse of USD 330,000 will be presented in each region.

“The Fabric Formwork Book: Methods for Building New Architectural and Structural Forms in Concrete” is the first comprehensive monograph on the emerging technology of flexible molds for reinforced concrete architecture. 

Swift Lee Office’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) High-Performing School Prototype has been successfully built on three sites in California. SLO is now a contender to design and manufacture the prototype classroom buildings for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) at various school sites, where it is shifting the discussion on building cost away from the short term to examine sustainability across the building’s life cycle.

A free translation of “Greening Asia: Emerging Principles of Sustainable Architecture” by Nirmal Kishnani has already been shared with over 300 students. The LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction and Holcim Indonesia co-sponsored the translation into Bahasa Indonesia launched in Jakarta and Bandung.

Winning a LafargeHolcim Awards Next Generation prize has had a significant impact on Meriem Chabani, a young French-Algerian architect: “It has given rise to publications and brought us numerous invitations to present this work,” she explains in an interview series by French/English magazine L’Architecture d’Aujhourd’hui (‘A’A’).

The spiralling towers created by Alberto Fernández and Susana Ortega capture the moisture from the clouds of the “Camanchaca”, a coastal fog originating from the anticyclone of the Pacific. The towers are planned for the dry coastal fringe of Chile where agriculture is constrained by water scarcity. Since winning a Next Generation prize in 2008, the concept has been further developed with funding from the Chilean Government and from the United Nations. The construction of the towers was adapted from the original design to interconnect the structure and the fabric, which accelerates the construction process.

2015, was certainly a year to remember for Colectivo720. After winning the LafargeHolcim Awards Gold for Latin America in 2014, architects Mario Camargo and Luis Tombé, together with Juan Calle and Horacio Valencia of EPM Group, won the Global LafargeHolcim Award Gold the year after.

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (‘A’A’) interviewed American designers Amy Mielke and Caitlin Taylor of Water Pore Partnership who won the LafargeHolcim Awards Gold 2014 for their Poreform project. Their approach repositions water infrastructure as a civic project: using a water absorptive surface and subterranean basin to capture rain runoff that adds over 75,000 megaliters to the water supply capacity of Las Vegas, USA. Capable of rapid saturation and slow release, the flood-control pores of this “urban skin” are inlets to a new infrastructure that reframes water as a valuable resource rather than a liability.

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (‘A’A’) discussed their iconic Flussbad project with Jan and Tim Edler from Berlin-based realities:united studio. The architects won two LafargeHolcim Awards (LafargeHolcim Award Gold for Europe in 2011, Global LafargeHolcim Award Bronze in 2012) for their project located in the centre of Berlin that aims to transform an unused arm of the River Spree into a natural “swimming pool”.