Fourth Holcim Awards
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Fourth Holcim Awards Regional and global Holcim Awards competitions for sustainable construction projects and visions 2014/2015 Exhibition of all 62 prize winning projects in the 4th cycle Fourth competition cycle of the International Holcim Awards in Zurich. Global Holcim Awards 2015 2 Regional Holcim Awards 2014 Holcim Foundation Introduction by Edwin Heathcote A new horizon for sustainable architecture 4 Geographical overview Location of all prize winning projects 8 Members of the jury 7 Prize winning projects Gold for Articulated Site, Medellín, Colombia 10 Silver for Post-War Collective, Ambepussa, Sri Lanka 20 Bronze for The Dryline, New York City, USA 28 Finalist projects Europe 36 North America 54 Latin America 66 Africa Middle East 78 Asia Pacific 96 Members of the juries 108 Prize winning projects Europe 110 North America 134 Latin America 160 Africa Middle East 184 Asia Pacific 208 “Target issues” for sustainable construction 234 Members of Board, Academic Committee and Office 235 “The Holcim Awards are a great chance to present professional skills and smart design to the public” “The Holcim Awards bring together an enriching variety of ideas and celebrate people’s ambitions to live better lives” Matthias Schuler, Germany. Professor of Environmental Technology, Graduate School of Meisa Batayneh Maani, Jordan. Founder and Principal Architect at Maisam Architects Design at Harvard University; Founder of Transsolar Energietechnik. & Engineers. A new horizon for sustainable architecture By Edwin Heathcote, architecture critic, The Financial Times, London, UK* *First published as introduction to “Selected Projects,” a special edition of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui dedicated to the 4th International Holcim Awards, ISBN 978-2-918832-38-6 4 “The Holcim Awards are very valuable, very important – and different: because they celebrate integrating sustainability in a holistic way” “The Holcim Awards have become in many ways the standard bearer of the values of sustainability across the globe” Yolanda Kakabadse, Ecuador. President of WWF International; Chair of the Advisory Mohsen Mostafavi, USA. Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Board of Fundación Latinoamericano. Head of the Global Holcim Awards jury 2015. Sustainability has become a cliché. It is a word used so often and leading the pack for sophistication and ambition, that gulf between so carelessly that it can now be used to defend the most banal what we might call the Global North and the Global South has buildings and an architecture of the most conspicuous consumption. receded. This round of submissions shows, if anything, a more wide- Perhaps precisely because of this misuse and abuse of the word, ranging, more searching set of submissions from Africa Middle East there is a sense that a new generation of architects is simultaneously and Latin America in particular. Perhaps it is because those are beea_d]jeh[Z[Ód[j^[_Z[We\ikijW_dWX_b_joWdZjecel[WmWo\hec the continents where the most rapid urbanization is occurring – the object building and towards the landscape and the civic realm of problems of architecture are being felt most acutely right now in public participation. rapidly-expanding cities and at the edges between wealth and poverty, between the established and the informal city. Happily, that is exactly what we are seeing in this 4th cycle of the Inter- national Holcim Awards competition. There seems to be a deliberate Alfredo Brillembourg, founder of Urban-Think Tank in Caracas, departure from signature architecture which has dominated architec- Venezuela, who was on the Holcim Awards jury for Latin America tural press and graduate exhibitions for decades. Instead, there is a confirmed that sustainability has become a cliché: “We should growing awareness of social issues and the way architecture can be be working towards resilience. There needs to be recognition of com- used to reinforce community and increase the resilience of what look plexity and multiplicity of uses. Until now there has been an emphasis like increasingly fragile cities. Marc Angélil, the chair of architecture on technology and innovation, but a lot of that kit doesn’t work or and design and senior dean of the Department of Architecture at never gets built. Instead we should be looking at re-using existing ETH Zurich, Switzerland, who has been present on all five regional buildings and asking a bigger question – a super-discussion about Holcim Awards juries 2014, said: “There has been a transformation what sustainability is. Is it sustainable to have this much poverty in in attitudes to sustainability. Ten years ago there was a general a city?” understanding, but the projects have become more sophisticated, on the one hand offering the possibilities of aesthetics and on the Stuart Smith, a director at engineering giant Arup in London, United other, social agency. The responses have become far more complex.” Kingdom, and a member of the Holcim Awards jury for Europe notes a trend towards land and society. “The recession has left a legacy The judges concurred that where there had once been a visible of more realistic projects,” he says, “an awful lot of people are think- hierarchy in the quality of designs, with Europe and North America ing about landscape and social conditions as opposed to individual 5 “The Holcim Awards show that sustainable solutions often have a considerable economic advantage” “The Holcim Awards contribute to the evolution of sustainable construction from something rare to establishing a new convention within the discipline” Marc Angélil, Switzerland. Senior Dean of the Department of Architecture at the Swiss Rolf Soiron, Switzerland. Chairman of the Board of the Holcim Foundation for Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). Sustainable Construction. buildings – and hardly any seem to be looking at form or geometry.” Wioij[ce\ÔeeZZ[\[di[iWhekdZCWd^WjjWdjeWÔeWj_d]cWha[j Although Smith is a little critical of the lack of real research into and civic space in the Amazon. Both the scarcity and abundance of technologies, he is also very upbeat. “I came away from the process water are dealt with in a series of often visionary proposals. energized,” he says, “the younger generation in particular seem impressive in their commitment and in the realism of their work.” Another theme that Angélil elicits is waste. A number of the projects in this year’s lists pick waste, whether from the construction process Dana Cuff, professor and founding director of CityLAB at UCLA or domestic and industrial needs and use it to create something, (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) was a little less be that a new settlement or a new structure. It seems like a kind impressed by the North American entries. “It is not a problem with the of guilt, as if our consumption has come back to haunt us and we competition,” she says, “but with the United States, where we’ve require some kind of signpost to assuage our guilt but also to begin abandoned the idea of the public realm in an almost complete addressing what seems to be a problem that we have buried in manner.” It is an interesting moment for sustainability, she suggests. landfill for too long, out of sight and out of smell. The vague memory “We’re leaving the Birkenstock era and sustainability is becoming that there are whole settlements built on the recycling of waste from cool, which is a good thing – but we need to start thinking of build- the West seems to haunt our consciousness, while simultaneously ings more like pets than objects. What I mean is that we’re going to providing an intriguing model for a Global North version, a more have to live with these buildings, take care of them over time and humane interpretation of a place consuming what is thrown away. that requires a new relationship with architecture.” One more theme which Angélil extracts from his extensive survey It also demands a new and more symbiotic relationship with the land of the more than 2,500 submissions is the wall. “Water, waste and and the surrounding environment. The idea of an international style, walls,” he jokes, “somehow we seem to have picked the three W’s.” and subsequently of signature “starchitect” buildings looks increas- Whether they are “breathable” walls, or walls capable of trans- ingly unsustainable. Marc Angélil says: “This year we noticed a very forming carbon dioxide into oxygen, whether they are high-tech strong focus on water. It provided a red thread through many of the or low-tech walls, and whether they are protecting cities from the schemes, addressing climate change and infrastructure as a recurrent elements or attempts to understand the nature of porosity in the theme.” There is a remarkable range of designs dealing with this digital city – the wall remains a seemingly mesmeric element. In the subject, from attempts to map subterranean water in California and context of sustainability and of the desired ideas of resilience that 6 “The Holcim Awards “The Holcim Awards have not only brought are the most awareness, but have significant – they are also raised the standard the only awards for how we deal that focus purely on with sustainability” innovation in the context of sustainability” Alejandro Aravena, Chile. Partner Architect and Executive Director of Elemental. Maria Atkinson AM, Australia. Sustainability Business Advisor; Founding CEO of the Green Building Council of Australia. Brillembourg proposes, it is also a profoundly symbolic element. Zurich, Switzerland: March 5, 2015 The wall is the symbol of enclosure, of keeping things out: the weather, other people, the noise and the throng of the city. Global Holcim Awards But what if it could be reinterpreted as a less finite gesture? The increasing polarization of the world’s cities and the widening jury members 2015 gap between rich and poor brought about an acceleration of the gated community and the privatization of once-public space.