Global Holcim Awards Winners 2015

Turning a decommissioned water reservoir into a park in Medellín won Gold (left); Rebuilding social fabric through a community library in Ambepussa following Sri Lanka’s civil war won Silver (center); and creating public zones and flood-protection for the island of Manhattan won Bronze (right).

Understanding the topography and the existing elements of the site to create landscape space and also using local vegetation to improve the environmental quality by creating birding and wildlife trails.

The project provides public space for leisure and vitality.

The common lobby with its panoramic window.

Specific steel welding joints have been strategically incorporated in the building. These joints provide the technical platforms to incrementally transfer welding and cutting skills to the workforce.

BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group (Copenhagen/New York) and One Architecture (Amsterdam), in collaboration with the City of New York, propose a protective ribbon in Southern Manhattan using a series of raised berms and other measures to create public spaces along the water’s edge, forming a large-scale integrated flood protection system.

How can the mandate of large-scale protective infrastructure with meaningful community engagement be obtained? How can the requirements of a “Robert Moses” hard infrastructure combined with the local community-driven sensitivity of Jane Jacobs be manifest? BIG U contains a protective ribbon: 21 km (13 mi) of flood protection tailored to each neighborhood and the community it serves.