Project Updates

An ambitious project to transform public perceptions of water, and to embed civic amenities into water infrastructure is underway in Mexico City. The Global LafargeHolcim Awards Gold winning project will improve conditions in the dense urban fabric by forming a greenbelt that doubles as water management infrastructure. Hydropuncture consolidates an alternate, decentralized, and sustainable water management system for Mexico City. Work is progressing according to plan. Basic earthworks are completed and the series of terraced platforms and retaining walls of volcanic stones are in place.

Esquimalt Municipal Council has approved a rezoning application enabling the go-ahead of the Corvette Landing development. The building’s 83-units will be in the form of studio and one, two and three-bedroom suites located adjacent to Esquimalt Harbor in the urban area of Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia. The 12-storey mass timber pre-fabricated modular construction will provide affordable homes and won the LafargeHolcim Awards Silver for North America in 2017. The design by Vancouver-based Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture is based on “BC-produced mass-timber technology” using engineered wood products and off-site construction methods.

The Awards Acknowledgement winning project of Kennedy & Violich Architecture has now been completed with ten apartments, studios and penthouses in the urban in-fill development. The building creates a unique identity through its set-back terraced façade that gives out onto the street, its transformation of wrought iron fire escapes into a digitally designed and fabricated screen wall.

Construction of the first of 28 chalice-shaped concrete pillars that will be the eye-catching feature of the 400m long and 80m wide train station concourse in Stuttgart begins. The pillars will support the roof of the underground station and serve as “light eyes”, allowing daylight to enter the hall below. 

The convention centre designed by Daniel Bermúdez (Colombia) and Juan Herreros (Spain) received an Acknowledgement prize for their vertically-stacked structure that minimizes building footprint and maximizes outdoor public space in the heart of Colombia’s capital. After five years in design and construction, the 64,000-square-metre convention centre opened in October 2017 by hosting the World Summit of Young Leaders.

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.