It is the mission of the Holcim Foundation to select and support initiatives that combine sustainable construction solutions with architectural quality and enhanced quality of life beyond technical solutions. The Holcim Foundation intends to encourage sustainable responses to the technological, environmental, socio-economic and cultural issues affecting building and construction.
The objective of the Holcim Foundation is the non-commercial promotion and development of sustainable construction, regionally as well as globally.
The Holcim Foundation wants to make a difference. Utilizing the global reach of the Holcim Group, it is to accelerate progress toward sustainable construction, encouraging initiatives in support of sustainable approaches to the provision of housing and infrastructure in industrializing and industrialized nations alike.
It wants to unite the multiplicity of competencies globally available in the construction sector around a heightened awareness of their critical role in sustainability: diffusing best practice, pioneering fresh solutions, inspiring young architects and engineers, and tomorrow’s developers and contractors, to adopt new, sustainable, parameters for all they build.
Management Board of the Holcim Foundation The Management Board of the Holcim Foundation defines and approves the strategy and the programs of the Holcim Foundation and its initiatives. The Management Board is responsible for managing the Holcim Foundation, and appointing individuals to support its activities. The majority of members of the Management Board must be independent from the sponsor of the Holcim Foundation.Advisory Board of the Holcim Foundation The Advisory Board of the Holcim Foundation ensures that the activities of the Foundation are aligned with current interpretations of sustainable construction and inspires the Foundation's activities by framing the architectural, scientific, cultural, and policy concerns that should be integrated into the initiatives. Technical Competence Center of the Holcim Foundation The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich operates as the global Technical Competence Center of the Holcim Foundation and provides academic and technical credibility by developing, supporting und implementing the Holcim Foundation’s initiatives on the scientific/technical level in close cooperation with four partner universities.
The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction is dependent upon competent support, especially in the technical field. Five of the world's leading technical universities have agreed to act as partners to the Holcim Foundation. Drawn from around the world, our partner universities help to host the Holcim Forums and to produce a specialized publication from each Forum; they define the evaluation criteria to be used for the Holcim Awards; and they put together the panels who judge the competition entries. Follow the links below for profiles of each of our partner universities:
The Holcim Foundation is committed to the “triple bottom line” concept, which asserts that long-term and sustainable progress requires the balanced achievement of economic growth, ecological balance and social progress. It confirms that the benefit to society in terms of environmental quality, social progress and well being outweigh the efforts undertaken to achieve them. Based on this concept and to make sustainable construction easier to understand, evaluate and apply, the Holcim Foundation and its partner universities have identified a set of five “target issues” for sustainable construction, which serve as the basis for the adjudication process of the Holcim Awards and as a framework for other activities of the Holcim Foundation: