Project Updates

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.

Construction of the LafargeHolcim Awards winning net-zero energy greenhouse at Wellesley College, USA is now complete. 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 in two years. More than 1,000 varieties of plants are housed in the bio-friendly greenhouse – and are showing signs of handling the transition well.

The Global LafargeHolcim Awards jury praised the work of architects Wonjoon Han and Gahee Van of VHAN, and executive director Suki Yook of NGO Make Africa Better, South Korea. They considered the shea butter storage concept for the Nyingali community to be sophisticated and community focused. The prize was presented during the closing session of the 6th LafargeHolcim Forum by Brinda Somaya, Principal Architect and Managing Director, Somaya & Kalappa Consultants, India and member of the Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation in April 2019.

Building a cultural facility in a village in Niger called for the delicate approach of both Mariam Kamara, founder of Atelier masōmī, and Yasaman Esmaili, founder of studio chahar, laureates of the LafargeHolcim Awards Gold Middle East Africa in 2017 and the Global LafargeHolcim Award Silver the year after.

Columbian practice Colectivo720 envisioned the transformation of these reservoirs into cultural and leisure facilities. “When we awarded the Medellín project, we valued the way in which an infrastructural area had been transformed into an urban site providing a recreational space for the neighbourhood and fostering a sense of belonging in the community,” explains Fernando Diez, member of the jury of the LafargeHolcim Awards for Latin America and director of the Argentinian architecture journal Summa+. As a result, the proposal was crowned with a regional Gold Award in 2014, a Global Award Gold in 2015 as well as a Building Better Recognition Prize for Latin America in 2017. These recognitions, in addition to showcasing an exemplary project, had many positive consequences for the development of Colectivo720.

In March 2019, British Colombia became Canada’s first province to approve mass timber buildings up to 12 floors. This evolution paved the way for construction to start using building technology advanced by a Global LafargeHolcim Awards 2018 finalist project by a team led by Cindy Wilson and Oliver Lang of LWPAC + Intelligent City. They received a certificate from the LafargeHolcim Foundation in recognition of their work.

Today, everyone in Berlin is focused on the improbable reconstruction of the “Schloss”, the former palace of the Hohenzollern sovereigns. However, another project unfolding at its feet – less spectacular but altogether more avant-garde – seems to be earning so much praise from the profession that it won the LafargeHolcim Awards Gold for Europe in 2011, followed by a Global Award Bronze the year after.

Architect Milinda Pathiraja explains that the greatest benefit of winning the Global LafargeHolcim Award was the international exposure it gave Robust Architecture Workshop as a young architectural practice from Sri Lanka. “We were less than three years into the practice when we won the Awards – the regional and the global one – and the library project was only the third building we had completed”, he explains.

Fairs, exhibitions and other types of conventions spotlight a city as well as its facilities. Yet, Ágora Bogotá, which won a LafargeHolcim Acknowledgement Prize in 2014, is a rather “discreet and silent” building. Where many were expecting a formal demonstration, the Colombian studio Bermúdez Arquitectos and the Spanish architecture office Estudio Herreros preferred to design a simple volume. The challenge here was not to design a strange, convoluted shape for this location, but rather to conceive a highly functional and compact place.

Money isn’t everything. Intelligence is also required. Julia King, laureate of a LafargeHolcim Next Generation prize for Asia Pacific in 2011, advocated a sanitation strategy for New Delhi’s poorest neighbourhoods. Based on a survey painstakingly carried out in the most deprived streets of India’s capital, this young English architect prioritized the expectations of each individual, in addition to identifying the technical problems as well as the legal obstacles.