News

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the death of our friend, Edward “Edi” Schwarz, who suddenly passed away earlier this week. Edi touched the lives of many people across all five continents during his tenure as General Manager of the Holcim Foundation.

This Holcim Awards prize-winner is fulfilling a double mission: rebuilding infrastructure following a powerful volcanic eruption and strengthening ties within a village community affected by the destruction.

This project by Espacio Colectivo Arquitectos in Colombia offers a new residential and agrarian model for farmers living at high altitude in the mountains near Bogota. The combined residence and greenhouse proposes an affordable and modular housing solution that enhances farming conditions, reducing the economic pressure to migrate to urban centres.

The extensive Emerald Necklace park system is one of Boston’s distinctive urban amenities. Highway expansion beginning in the 1960s severed the system at various points. Today, a broad-based project aims to repair one of the most important and heavily affected sections of parkland.

The Sara Culture Centre in Skellefteå, currently one of the tallest wooden high-rises in the world, aims to be accessible and enhance the city’s attractiveness. The design by Oskar Norelius, Robert Schmitz, and their team from White Arkitekter won an international design competition in 2015 for a new cultural center in the heart of the city of Skellefteå in the north of Sweden.

Shenzhen is one of the most rapidly growing megacities in the world, with a population that has soared from a few thousand in 1980 to 13 million today. The city’s booming economy continues to attract new inhabitants but available space for urban development is scarce. Planners usually opt to demolish the traditional villages that were swallowed up by the urban sprawl, but Jing Han and Yuxing Zhang see things differently: their project preserves Shajing Ancient Fair, the largest remaining historic district in Shenzhen. By restoring six sites along the small Longjin River, their intervention creates new spaces while giving traditional areas a new lease of life.

Yemen is one of the most unstable nations in the world, with various groups fighting for power in since 2013. Iraqi-British architect Salma Samar Damluji and colleagues in Yemen established the Daw’an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation in 2008. The foundation based in Hadramaut Governorate has been working on earth construction and post-war reconstruction projects.

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction hosted a workshop with some of the brightest young minds in architecture, urbanism and design from Europe, Middle East Africa and Asia Pacific. The Next Generation Awards Lab held in Lausanne, Switzerland, brought together student and young professional prize winners of the Holcim Awards competition from three regions to receive their trophies, present their prize-winning concepts, and forge a network for future exchange.

by Nicolas Ayoub, Aarti Dhingra, Claudia Eugenin and Kiley Feickert

Focusing on a concrete high-rise located in Kendall Square of the Massachussett’s Institute of Technology (MIT)’s campus in Cambridge, MA, the third group’s intervention was done with student housing in mind, aiming to create a highly-personalisable, yet private space for shorter-term residents.

The engagement of the community during the design and construction process is a remarkable contribution to social inclusion and knowledge transfer in this Holcim Awards winning project. Villagers of the Iratapuro River community in north-eastern Brazil collect and process Brazil nuts. They share the profits of extracted nut oil supplied to Natura, a cosmetics company.

This new health complex is tailored to the cultural needs of indigenous people and is sustainably embedded in the Arctic environment. Architects Lola Sheppard and Mason White collaborated with the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation (AIWF) to envision a centre that will cater to the needs of 22,000 people from seven indigenous groups living in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

In a war-torn area still recovering from bitter conflict, the construction of an arts centre will help reconnect two divided ethnic communities. This Holcim Awards winner results from a collaboration between architect Vernes Causevic and the “Most Mira” (“Bridge of Peace”) charity founded by Kemal Pervanic.

French architect Jean-Pierre Pranlas-Descours and his team lead this Holcim Awards winner, in association with the French Scientific & Technical Building Centre (CSTB). The proposal for sustainable urbanisation 50km south-east of Lanzhou in China will preserve both traditional villages and agrarian land. It also offers new water-management solutions in an increasingly arid area.

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction held a workshop with a hand-selected group of next generation experts to plot future challenges and ideas on transforming the built environment. In a first-of-its kind event for the Holcim Foundation, the workshop brought together the 11 members of its Next Generation Accelerator (NGX) group representing ten countries and five continents – to develop suggestions for the Foundation’s future strategy and activities. 

This Holcim Awards winner by Riwaq aims to bring back traditional know-how, reconnect communities over sustainable practices and equip women and workers with transferable skills. These social and environmental goals will be achieved by repurposing a ruined historical site in East Jerusalem to create a public forum and cultural centre. 

This Holcim Awards winner by Medellin-based architects Connatural aims to salvage a badly damaged 5.5km-long wetland in Bogotá, Colombia. The vision to transform the wetland into a socially and ecologically significant park brings together art, architecture, and landscape design.

This Holcim Awards winner originates from a collaboration between Michael Sorkin Studio and non-profit Blacks In Green. Their shared vision to transform a problematic neighbourhood of Chicago into a “sustainable square mile” focusses on improving housing affordability and empowering collaboration between residents.

This Holcim Awards winner shows how to turn design processes upside-down in favour of circular construction. Architects baubüro in situ and partners salvaged most of the components in this high-quality building conversion from demolition sites.

Diébédo Francis Kéré, architect, educator and social activist, has been selected as the 2022 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His pioneering approach to architecture creates projects that are sustainable to the earth and its inhabitants - and delivers innovative solutions in lands of extreme scarcity.

Laura Viscovich is replacing Edward Schwarz as Head of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. Edward Schwarz wished to retire in 2022 after more than 30 years of service in the Holcim Group, including the establishment and development of the Foundation since 2003.