Awards History

Awards 2014–2015: Cycle Summary

Contributing to the evolution of sustainable construction

  • Project update December 2015 – Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park, Medellín, Colombia

    Global Holcim Awards Gold 2015

    Architects Mario Camargo and Luis Tombé from Colectivo 720 merge social imperatives with technical requirements to create a “socio-technical” landscape of magnificent beauty.

  • Global Gold Awards 2015 prize handover – Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park, Medellín, Colombia

    Global Holcim Awards Gold 2015

    Winner Mario Camargo of Colectivo 720, Colombia

  • Project update November 2015 – Post-War Collective: Community library and social recuperation, Ambepussa, Sri Lanka

    Global Holcim Awards Silver 2015

    Post-War Collective in Sri Lanka transforms a discharged army into a motivated workforce using a set of concrete measures including the introduction of an educational program and the deployment of particular construction techniques.

  • Feature interview – Post-War Collective: Community library and social recuperation, Ambepussa, Sri Lanka

    Global Holcim Awards Silver 2015

    Winning team from Robus Architecture Workshop RAW (l-r): Ganga Ratnayake and Milinda Pathiraja, Sri Lanka

  • Project entry 2014 North America – Rebuild by Design: Urban flood protection infrastructure, New York, NY, USA

    Global Holcim Awards Bronze 2015

    The Dryline (BIG U) addresses New York City’s vulnerability to coastal flooding with a protective ribbon in Southern Manhattan.

  • Holcim Awards North America ceremony, Toronto, Canada

    Global Holcim Awards Bronze 2015

    Winner presentation (l-r): jury member Enrique Norten, TEN Arquitectos; winners Kai-Uwe Bergmann, BIG Bjarke Ingels Group and Matthijs Bouw, One Architecture; with Alain Bourguignon, Holcim; and jury member Mark Jarzombek, MIT.

The 4th Holcim Awards 2014-15 competition cycle’s winning submissions represent the largest and most geographically-diverse set of sustainable construction projects and visions in the history of the competition. They illustrate increasingly sophisticated approaches that offer the possibilities of architectural aesthetics and “green building” as well as enabling social agency.

59

prize-winning projects

6,000

competition entries

152

countries represented

All three Global Holcim Awards 2015 prize winning projects are architectural interventions that deliver tangible benefits to local communities: Turning a decommissioned water reservoir into a park in Medellín, rebuilding social fabric through a community library in Ambepussa following Sri Lanka’s civil war, and creating public zones and flood-protection for the island of Manhattan.

The Holcim Awards has raised the standard and the quality of how professionals deal with sustainability.” Alejandro Aravena

Comments by the jury - Global Holcim Awards Gold 2015

Jury members, Mohsen Mostafavi, Alejandro Aravena and Marc Angélil comment on a project for a public park in Medellín, Colombia that combines architectural ideas and urban development across multiple scales.

There seems to be a deliberate departure from signature architecture which has dominated architectural press and graduate exhibitions for decades. Instead, there is a growing awareness of social issues and the way architecture can be used to reinforce community and increase the resilience of what look like increasingly fragile cities.


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