Grants funding at a glance

Supporting new ideas
The Holcim Foundation promotes and accelerates sustainable construction with seed funding for sustainable construction projects and research. These contributions allow a broad range of interesting and important new ideas, regardless of origin, to be realized and to be followed by an audience of professionals. Projects nominated for seed funding are assessed according to the five “target issues”. Grants are always provided with co-funding together with a Holcim Group company which then supports and monitors the ongoing project.

Research support for informal urban development
Architect Arturo Ortiz Struck studied the mechanisms of informal development in Mexican cities – and the Holcim Foundation supported his important work with a research grant announced at the Holcim Forum in 2007. Workshops on sustainable construction in the municipality of Chimulhuacán have been followed by the successful construction of 17 new houses.

New York City (Steady) State
Michael Sorkin is studying circulation systems for energy, construction, mobility, social economics, water, food, air, waste, climate, and production. The goal of the ongoing research project is to develop a master plan for New York based on the paradigm of sustainability.

Sustainability of Asian Megacities
Sabrina Krank studied at the Chair for Sustainable Construction at the ETH Zurich, which was made possible by the Holcim Foundation in 2004. Her dissertation is the first to be finished at this new department. In her study she investigates 16 of the Agenda 21 indicators in relation to five Asian megacities.

NEST - New Energy Self-sufficient Town
NEST is the concept for the pilot city Buranest in Ethiopia. The investments in the suitable infrastructure should create new income sources for the inhabitants and simultaneously develop their abilities and skills.

Holcim Grants - PhD Research - Third Age urbanism

Third Age urbanism
In his dissertation “Third Age Urbanism: Retirement Utopias of the Young-Old”, New Zealand architect Deane Simpson investigates the relationships between demographic, social, and urban development – a seldom applied approach.

Development Alternatives headquarters
The Holcim Foundation and ACC jointly donated USD 320,000 to enable completion of the "center for excellence in sustainable habitat." This is the first time the Holcim Foundation, established in 2004, has made a donation of this kind towards a construction project.

PhD Research grants
The recipients of the first Holcim Foundation research grants were announced at the Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction in Shanghai on April 19, 2007. They received research grants amounting to a total of USD 200,000.

Unsolicited grant proposals
Please note that the Holcim Foundation is unable to respond to project seed funding or PhD research projects which are submitted directly to it.

Legal

Holcim Ltd