Project Updates

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.

“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.

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”.

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (‘A’A’) talked to Hani Jaber about the impact of the Award on his work as an architect – which takes key social problems into consideration while offering appropriate design solutions to address specific issues at hand.

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (‘A’A’) asked Lluis Enrique more about his research and the impact of winning a LafargeHolcim Awards prize on his work. A research project conducted by Povilas Cepaitis, Lluis Enrique, Diego Ordoñez and Carlos Piles, a team of students from the AA School of Architecture in London received a regional and global LafargeHolcim Awards prize in 2011/12.