Holcim Foundation Awards 2025: Grand Prize Winners Unveiled in Venice

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has announced the five regional Grand Prize winners for its 2025 Awards, championing groundbreaking sustainable design projects across the Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, and North America. 

The five Grand Prize winners were celebrated alongside 15 Holcim Foundation Awards regional winners, who together share a prize pool of USD 1 million.

Celebrated at a prestigious event in Venice, the ceremony was attended by members of the winning teams, distinguished jury members, global design media, as well as experts in architecture, engineering, and urban development.

The Awards are among the world’s most significant honors in sustainable architecture, and the Grand Prize-winning projects (all in the development stage at the time of entry) exemplify the Foundation’s goals of Uplifting Places, Healthy Planet, Thriving Communities, and Viable Economics.

For their outstanding contributions to sustainable construction, each of the 20 winning projects received USD 40,000 from the Holcim Foundation. Each of the five Grand Prize winners received an additional USD 40,000.

Jury Response

Juries, which for the 2025 cycle were chaired by Sou Fujimoto (APAC), Kjetil Trædal Thorsen (EU), Sandra Barclay (LATAM), Lina Ghotmeh (MEA), and Jeanne Gang (NAM), praised the Grand Prize winners for their innovation and impact. 

The Asia Pacific jury described the conversion of a former Bangladeshi jail in the center of Dhaka into a vibrant public realm as “transforming a place of punishment into one where residents can truly enjoy city life. The North America Jury nominated the Moakley Park in Boston as the region’s grand prize winner for exemplifying nature-based coastal resilience, integrating community-led design with layered green infrastructure to protect neighborhoods in a meaningful manner.

In Kosovo, the European jury noted how an old brick factory, which is being turned into a cultural hub, could potentially become a catalyst for post-conflict urban revival. Meanwhile in Brazil, jurors heralded a prototype school that embraces rural flooding rather than fighting against it, thereby setting a new model for climate-resilient education and action. 

“Sustainability today means listening closely to each place’s heritage and climate, and letting those guide architectural responses,” says Lina Ghotmeh, who served as a regional jury chair for the Middle East & Africa. “Our region’s Grand Prize-winning project showed that by respecting local context and community, we can project heritage and nature into our shared future,” she added of Qalandiya: the Green Historic Maze, a restoration initiative reviving a neglected village through circular conservation, traditional building methods, and locally led economic renewal. 

In summary, the 2025 Holcim Awards Grand Prize winners exemplify a growing global movement to design with, rather than against, communities and ecosystems. From high-tech material circularity to vernacular restoration, each winner presents a hopeful blueprint for building in a more resilient and inclusive manner. 

As the Holcim Foundation’s Venice ceremony affirmed, sustainable design and construction have truly come of age - and these five visionary projects are leading the way.

Asia Pacific - Grand Prize

• Old Dhaka Central Jail Conservation - Dhaka, Bangladesh | FORM.3 ARCHITECTS
  A historic jail site in central Dhaka is reimagined as a vibrant public space, blending adaptive reuse, passive cooling strategies, and local craft to deliver a culturally rooted, economically viable model for sustainable urban renewal.

Asia Pacific - Regional Winners

• Gelephu Mindfulness City - Gelephu, Bhutan | BIG – BJARKE INGELS GROUP
  A bold design in Bhutan integrates spiritual values, passive design, and renewable energy into a large-scale urban plan. Shaped by the landscape and local materials, it aims to set a global benchmark for sustainable urban planning and development.
• Healing Through Design - Bengaluru, India | THE AGAMI PROJECT / A THRESHOLD
  A compact health center in Bengaluru uses recycled stone and timber, passive cooling, and community-led design to form a vibrant, inclusive hub for healing, culture, and social resilience.
• Pingshan River Blueway Landscape - Shenzhen, China | SASAKI ASSOCIATES
  A 40km river corridor in Shenzhen is transformed into a biodiverse public landscape, integrating passive measures to reduce the urban heat island (UHI) effect, material reuse, and regional cultural heritage to create a flood-resilient, inclusive urban greenway.

Europe - Grand Prize

• Art-Tek Tulltorja - Pristina, Kosovo | RAFI SEGAL A+U, OFFICE OF URBAN DRAFTERS, ORG PERMANENT MODERNITY, STUDIO REV
  A former brick factory in Prishtina is reimagined as a creative and tech program, combining clean energy, circular construction, and community-led programming to drive cultural, social, and economic regeneration in post-conflict Kosovo.

Europe - Regional Winners

• School in Gaüses - Girona, Spain | TED'A ARQUITECTES
  A rural school in Catalonia built from local earth, timber, and tile rethinks education through sustainability, turning its forested site into a space where children learn by doing—inside and out.
• The Crafts College - Herning, Denmark | DORTE MANDRUP
  A vocational campus uses recycled materials, passive design, and shared public space to connect education with sustainable building and craft, offering students a hands-on model for learning by making.
• The Southern River Parks - Madrid, Spain | ALDAYJOVER ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE
  A large-scale restoration of Madrid’s southern riverbanks turns degraded land into resilient green infrastructure, using native planting, water reuse, and community-led design to address climate, biodiversity, and social challenges.

Latin America - Grand Prize

• Schools for Flood-Prone Areas - Porto Alegre, Brazil | ANDRADE MORETTIN ARQUITETOS ASSOCIADOS, SAUERMARTINS
  A Brazilian public school is redesigned to act as a multi-level refuge during annual floods, ensuring vital shelter for the local community, whilst offering a unique architecture that acts as a learning tool in itself.

Latin America - Regional Winners

• Barrio Chacarita Alta Housing - Asunción, Paraguay | MOS ARCHITECTS & ADAMO FAIDEN
  An innovative social housing project in Asunción’s Chacarita Alta district upgrades an informal settlement through resident participation, providing safe, affordable homes and transforming a polluted ravine into vibrant public spaces and pathways.
• Origin: The Reunion with the Lost Gardens - Medellín, Colombia | CONNATURAL
  Shaping a new landscape in Medellín, the project removes an obsolete concrete structure to uncover a buried creek. Integrating urban farming, water gardens, and outdoor classrooms, it reconnects a university campus with its natural hydrology.
• Sesc Parque Dom Pedro II - São Paulo, Brazil | UNA ARQUITETOS
  In central São Paulo, a derelict triangular lot wedged between highways and a river is reborn as a vibrant community center for the city’s underserved downtown population.

Middle East & Africa - Grand Prize

• Qalandiya: The Green Historic Maze - Qalandiya, Palestinian Territory | RIWAQ – CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION
  An incremental restoration project looks to revive a fragile historic village, honoring vernacular architecture, championing community engagement, optimizing ecological rehabilitation, and highlighting adaptive reuse.

Middle East & Africa - Regional Winners

• Brookside Secondary School - Asaba, Nigeria | STUDIO CONTRA
  A school harnessing locally crafted, low-carbon clay bricks revives nearly lost artisanal skills, whilst providing economic opportunities for the area.
• Waldorf School - Nairobi, Kenya | URKO SÁNCHEZ ARCHITECTS
  A semi-permanent primary school campus in Nairobi's forest poetically merges classrooms with nature, utilizing modular, earth-filled walls and lightweight roofs.
• Zando Central Market - Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo | THINK TANK ARCHITECTURE
  Redeveloping Kinshasa’s central market, this project provides safe, comfortable, shaded stalls for 20,000 vendors using passive design, breathable brick façades, and open concrete structures.

North America - Grand Prize

• Moakley Park - Boston, MA, United States | STOSS LANDSCAPE URBANISM
  A community-led waterfront park in Boston that integrates restored marshes, stormwater management, adaptive landscapes, and native plantings to create a resilient and inclusive public space.

North America - Regional Winners

• Buffalo Crossing Visitor Centre - Winnipeg, MB, Canada | STANTEC ARCHITECTURE
  A net-zero visitor centre in Winnipeg reconnecting communities to reclaimed landscapes, drawing on Indigenous design collaboration, and passive strategies.
• Lawson Centre for Sustainability - Toronto, ON, Canada | MECANOO ARCHITECTEN
  A climate-conscious urban infill education hub at Toronto’s Trinity College is deploying passive design strategies that foster community, circularity, and ecological restoration.
• Portland International Airport Main Terminal - Portland, OR, United States | ZGF
  A sustainably expanded airport terminal with locally sourced materials, passive daylighting, and community-informed design.

About the Holcim Foundation

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to support people who are change accelerators for sustainable construction. In addition to its flagship Awards program, the Foundation partners with academics and industry-leading practitioners to create educational opportunities and organizes events to facilitate the exchange of ideas and best practices.

The Holcim Foundation believes that a number of interdependent goals and principles for sustainable construction must be understood, mainstreamed, and implemented to succeed in building a better world.

Our Definition of Sustainable Design and Construction

Breakthrough ideas and solutions are needed to accelerate the construction industry’s transformation at speed and scale. These innovative solutions must be transferable to the entire sector to drive further impact. Furthermore, all sustainable building and infrastructure projects must address four interdependent goals with equal conviction:

• Healthy Planet: Structures that minimize resource use, avoid emissions, and embed solutions to repair ecosystems and restore biodiversity.
• Viable Economics: Financial planning that combines short term project feasibility with long term circular value creation.
• Thriving Communities: Inclusive and affordable living environments that cultivate equity, health and well-being.
• Uplifting Places: Beautiful and spatially relevant structures that work in unison with the local context and culture.

Media Contact: info@holcimfoundation.org