A secondary school project in Burkina Faso, a community center in Brazil, and an urban renewal plan in Germany are the winners of the Global Holcim Awards for 2012. The awards are presented on a three-year competition cycle by the Holcim Foundation to honor future-oriented and tangible sustainable-construction projects. The Global Holcim Award winners are chosen from a pool of 53 Gold, Silver, and Bronze award-winning projects in five global regions (Africa Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America). In total, more than 6,000 entries from 146 countries entered this year’s competition cycle.
“This beautiful school is not only an elegant design solution, but it also delivers training and employment, uses local building materials, and—with simple means—create an outstanding environment from a social viewpoint and also in constructive terms,” says Enrique Norten, head of the Global Holcim Awards jury and principal and founder of TEN Arquitectos.
Receiving the Silver award, along with $100,000, is a multifunctional community center in SĂŁo Paulo Brazil. The project, led by architecture firm Urban Think Tank, is designed for the Paraisopolis favela, which houses about 100,000 residents. It includes a terraced public space with areas for urban agriculture, a water-management system that uses rainwater and graywater, a public amphitheater, a music school, a small concert hall, sports facilities, public spaces, and transportation infrastructure. It is designed to prevent site erosion and mudslides on the surrounding steep landscape.
“This important intervention has the capacity to provide satisfaction and opportunities for the local community that create both connectivity and the construction in a viable way,” Norten says.
The Bronze Award winner, which received $50,000, is an urban plan for an underutilized arm of the River Spree in Berlin, Germany. The plan transforms this section of the river into a natural, 745-meter-long swimming pool—a swimming zone equivalent to 17 Olympic-sized pools. Designed by realities united, the plan also includes a 1.8- hectare reed bed natural reserve with sub-surface sand-bed filters that purify the water. Water will enter the constructed wetlands above the pool and be treated naturally before moving down into the pool. Water will flow from the swimming pool into the main arm of the Spree, and the pool is dammed 5 cm higher than the Spree to prevent reverse water flow. Around the pool area, the lower section of the river will be made into a public space on either side of the river, and a part of the upper section will be widened into a wildlife refuge.
“The project celebrates urban living in one of the world’s greatest cities, and also honors the city’s connection to its waterways,” Norten notes.
In addition to the three top prizes, the Global Holcim Awards program also allocated a total $150,000 in Innovation prizes to three projects. The winning projects were a construction technology that uses molds to combine existing processes and materials to fabricate cast-on-site concrete structures with reusable and digitally -fabricated wax formwork; a low-cost apartment project in Hamburg that uses prefabricated lightweight-concrete elements with recycled glass; and a research project on cast-concrete fabrication systems for geometrically complex building elements.
Italy: Lifestyle apartments and infrastructure recycled from former freeway viaducts, near Scilla Philippe Rizzotti, Philippe Rizzotti Architects, France
Malaysia: Ecologically-designed retail and commercial building, Putrajaya Kenneth Yeang, T. R. Hamzah & Yeang International Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia
Mexico: Urban regeneration master plan, Ciudad Juárez Jose Castillo, arquitectura 911sc, Mexico
Morocco: Training center for sustainable construction, Marrakesh Anna Heringer, Architect, Germany
Pakistan: Locally manufactured cob and bamboo school building, Jar Maulwi Eike Roswag, Ziegert Roswag Seiler Architekten Ingenieure, Germany
Palestine: Sustainable refurbishment of a primary school, near Al Azarije Claudia Romano, ARCò – Architettura e Cooperazione, Italy
USA: Energy and water efficient border control station, Van Buren, Maine Julie Snow, Julie Snow Architects, USA
USA: Zero net energy school building, Los Angeles Gloria Lee, Swift Lee Office, USA
Global Holcim Awards 2012 Jury
• Enrique Norten, architect, principal and founder, TEN Arquitectos, Mexico/USA • Maria Atkinson, administrator, group head of sustainability, lend lease and managing director, Sustainability Solutions, Australia • Aaron Betsky, architect/critic, director, Cincinnati Art Museum, USA • Mario Botta, architect, principal, Mario Botta Architetto, Switzerland • Yolanda Kakabadse, administrator, president of WWF International and chair of the advisory board of Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano, Ecuador • Julia Marton-Lefèvre, administrator, director general, IUCN, France/Switzerland • Rahul Mehrotra, architect, principal, Rahul Mehrotra Associates, India • Hans-Rudolf Schalcher, civil engineer, professor emeritus for planning and management in construction at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland • Werner Sobek, civil engineer, director of the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart, Germany • Rolf Soiron, administrator, chairman, Holcim, Switzerland
Global Holcim Innovation Prize 2012 Winners
Innovation First Prize ($75,000) High-efficiency concrete formwork technology, Zurich, Switzerland Matthias Kohler, Gramazio & Kohler, Architektur und Digitale Fabrikation, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Innovation Second Prize ($50,000) Low-cost apartments incorporating smart materials, Hamburg, Germany Frank Barkow, Barkow Leibinger Architects, Germany
Innovation Third Prize ($25,000) Efficient fabrication system for geometrically complex building elements, London, United Kingdom Povilas Cepaitis, AA School of Architecture, United Kingdom
