Introducing Two New Fellowships & More

Two new Holcim Foundation Fellowships are planned in Europe this summer. The first one, “Innovating Tomorrow’s Resilience” hosted by University College London (UCL), is now open for registrations. Held at UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus (21 July - 1 August), students will collaborate closely with lecturers, tutors and industry experts from partner firms AL_A, BDP, Eckersley O’Callaghan and Expedition Engineering to explore strategies to scale local resilience innovations.

The Fellowship is open to final year and recent masters graduates from universities in Europe. Participants selected for the Fellowship will be provided with accommodation and travel assistance for the duration of the program and receive full tuition for the course.

In addition to Innovating Tomorrow’s Resilience in London, the Holcim Foundation will conduct a second Fellowship in Europe in 2025. “Designing Incentives for Change” hosted by ETH Zurich in Brussels (September 1-12) will explore strategies for renovating Europe’s existing built environment with an emphasis on sustainable development. Applications will open soon – register your interest.

We are thrilled by the overwhelming response by change accelerators from across the globe to the Holcim Foundation Awards 2025. During the entry period, we received more than 5,500 registrations from 130 countries. Entries are now undergoing a preliminary review before the international expert jury panels begin their evaluation — using the Holcim Foundation’s goals for sustainable construction: Uplifting places | Healthy planet | Viable economics | Thriving communities.

Winners will be announced online in mid-October 2025 and representatives of each winning team will be invited to a Holcim Foundation Awards 2025 prize event to be held in Venice, Italy on 20 November 2025. We’ll be providing updates including insights into the jury meetings in upcoming newsletters.

Singapore-based Billion Bricks won a Holcim Foundation Award in 2020 for its self-financing housing solution with the flexibility to be scaled up and deployed in multiple parts of the world. Using solar panels to generate electricity for the homes and providing enough excess to be sold back to the grid, the project is being developed with rural communities in the Philippines – making housing affordable and accessible to more people.