“The international recognition of the LafargeHolcim Awards has motivated us keep on fighting to make our project become a reality,” said Sol Camacho and Jonathan Franklin as they received their Global Awards 2018 finalist certificate from Juliana Adrigueto and Bruna Mattos, representing LafargeHolcim in Brazil. The design for a mixed-use civic hub with durable, low-maintenance architecture and long-term financing in the neighborhood of Paraisópolis in São Paulo had received the Awards Silver for Latin America in 2017.

The situation in most informal settlements is out of control: The residents urgently need help to improve their living conditions – but complicated legal issues and diverse interests prevent people from realizing beneficial projects. Resolution and endurance is required, as the project PIPA in Paraisópolis shows.

As one of the three main LafargeHolcim Awards winners for Latin America in 2017, “Community Capital” automatically qualified as a finalist in the Global LafargeHolcim Awards 2018. All 15 finalist project teams were asked to submit an updated and more comprehensive entry that was evaluated by a global jury in March 2018.

View project entry posters – Global Holcim Awards

The results of the global phase of the 5th LafargeHolcim Awards competition were announced on March 28, 2018.

Read full media release – Global LafargeHolcim Awards 2018

Water is the hot topic among the project entries for the Holcim Awards in region Latin America. Whether for wastewater, drinking water, or tidal water, many of the prize winners have innovative and often surprising proposals for ways to master the use of this precious resource in Latin America.

Part of a long-term neighborhood upgrading process, the project is a mixed use civic hub. Across three adjacent buildings, it hosts, among other things, a dance school, auditorium, crèche, and commercial space. The design has been developed through collaboration between community organizations, a local architecture firm, and a private developer. The project is elaborated through time. Appropriation of the site through temporary events and structures makes the site a social space before construction even commences. Coinciding with a long-term investing model – “patient capital” – the durable, low-maintenance architecture foresees the popularity of the civic center for generations to come.

Patient Capital, Inclusive Model

Building on the concept of the “patient capital”, Projeto Integral Paraisópolis Avança (PIPA) is invested in the long-term economic self-sufficiency of the project. The business plan redistributes the benefits generated by the retail uses to ensure the operational capacity of the cultural and educational programs. The architectural design responds to the financial logics of the project, addressing the retail optimization and efficiency to ensure the viability of the cultural and social programs, their adequate management and maintenance. While the project gains zoning approval, the site is already in use providing enough revenue to maintain the temporary programming. The parking use of part of the site subsidizes the ongoing cultural and social activities and maintenance of the space.