Winners of the Holcim Awards for sustainable construction projects and visions from Asia Pacific have been announced, bringing the regional phase of the 3rd International Holcim Awards competition to a close. A total of USD 300,000 was presented to twelve groundbreaking projects at a ceremony in Singapore. The winning projects show how sustainable approaches to infrastructure for communities and innovative architecture can improve the built environment and enhance quality of life.

The jury commended this project for its seminal approach to town planning that introduces focus and context-sensitivity into large scale urban planning. It is a showcase of a conceptual framework for city expansion, applicable where classic urban planning failed. Demands of the city, an ecological concept, and issues of existing communities are respected and addressed. They are treated as integral parts of the city expansion. This urban development provides space for contemporary culture and sets correlation with traditional culture. A “high density” ecosystem negotiates between the urban and the rural. In the area of conflict between technical, social and political necessities, this project has the potential to trigger a revision of past urban planning and its redeployment in terms of today’s and future challenges.

This project targets the further development of Ulwe, a precinct of the world’s largest planned city of Navi Mumbai. The modernist master plan was developed in the 1970s and revised according to aspirations for a globalized urban development in the 1990s. Present settlements are monotonous and lack identity. The Village, the City, and the Ecosystem reconsiders the past development of the region that led to a rapid transformation of the area with little consideration of the existing landscape. The revised approach acts within the larger urban framework, but concentrates on an area in a more manageable scale.