The design of the Enkyo medical and social center received a Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize in 2008 for Latin America, and was praised by the jury for its potential to become a benchmark with regard to energy efficiency, geothermal pre-cooling and rainwater harvesting in the urban context of Brazil. Enkyo – an organization that has provided healthcare services to the Japanese Community in Brazil for more than 50 years – conducted an architectural competition for its new headquarters in São Paulo. The selected design was then revised due to economic constraints and completed in August 2009.

The winning projects of the second Holcim Awards competition for Sustainable Construction in Latin America were announced at a ceremony in Mexico City. Total prize money of USD 270,000 was presented to twelve projects from across the region that deliver innovative solutions to social housing, energy efficiency, and the revitalization of communities and water resources.

The Enkyo medical and social center located in the Asian Quarter of Liberdade close to downtown São Paulo will be thoroughly computer-simulated with regard to its surrounding urban context for observations of aerodynamics, thermal behavior and natural lightning. This is a pilot project for computer-simulation in Brazil. Based on sound analyses, all traced strategies were meant to be economical and simple rather than high-tech in order to keep life cycle costs low.

In the planning of this Energy-efficient medical and social center, computer simulations played an important role – aerodynamics, thermal behavior and natural lighting were traced to minimize building costs and improve eco-efficiency. One sustainable measure is harnessing ground-water to cool intake air before standard air-conditioning systems are needed – known as geo-thermal pre-cooling.