Solutions in Sustainable Construction

Religious and secular complex: A reinterpretation of traditional local construction for a new mosque and community center, creating a space in the village open to all.

The secondary school project uses traditional building materials and technologies and places great emphasis on actively involving the local population in the construction process. Locally-sourced clay is mixed with aggregates and cement to cast walls on-site based on a two-piece formwork. The school is exemplary in terms of its successful approach to the adaptive use of building materials, community development, climatic mitigation and aesthetics.

The renovation and extension project currently under construction provides a new home for the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design on the site of a culturally significant nineteenth century structure. The project rehabilitates existing urban, landscape, and architectural elements – and demonstrates the University of Toronto’s aim to foreground sustainability as part of its pedagogic program.

Cooling as a process is one of the biggest energy consumers in the building sector globally. Air-shade addresses this problem by proposing a shading system that is sensitive to solar exposure and powered by air – with no need of any external energy source. It can vary in scale, size, material, and form: the proposed device is therefore applicable to a broad variety of buildings, constructions, façades, roofs, windows, etc.

Project intermingling flood basins and public amenities, with spaces following the gravitational logic of flowing water in an underprivileged area of Mexico City.

Following over 25 years of civil war, the reintegration of young soldiers is one of the great challenges Sri Lanka faces. This Community Library provided young men from underprivileged backgrounds with construction training during the implementation of the building. The slender building with a footprint of 1,400 sq m sits lightly in the landscape and wraps around an inner courtyard, taking full advantage of cross ventilation and daylighting. Rammed-earth walls and recycled materials reduce costs and the ecological footprint.

Air Rights: Prototype for a low-carbon architecture built above existing public parking spaces – an ingenious solution to solve London’s housing shortage.

This entry is focused on the development of a smart but simple methodology to design and prefabricate building elements with complex geometries, which is resource efficient and considerably reduces construction waste. Complex geometries are utilized in contemporary architecture for the construction of concrete or mortar building envelopes, partition walls, horizontal and vertical shading elements and pavements.

This winner of the first Global Holcim Awards Gold (2006) places the railway station underground to recover land and to create a new urban area, combining structural and landscape aspects. The Deutsche Bahn project to add a new high-speed line for this city laid out in an underground tunnel at a right angle to the existing tracks started construction in 2015. This will free up development space for a vast new urban quarter. 

The Dryline (BIG U) addresses New York City’s vulnerability to coastal flooding with a protective ribbon in Southern Manhattan. The 12 km-long infrastructural barrier incorporates public space with the high-water barrier doubling as parks, seating, bicycle shelters or skateboard ramps. Embankments add green areas and spaces beneath elevated roadways are built out with pavilions for public use. In an emergency, the shutters close forming a floodwater barrier.