Winners of Holcim Awards 2014 North America have been announced

The Holcim Foundation has held its prize-giving ceremony for the Holcim Awards 2014 North America, recognising 13 projects with a total prize money of US$330 000. The ceremony took place in Toronto, Canada, and was hosted by 2008 award winner Evergreen Brick Works.

A jury of independent, international experts selected the winners. This was hosted by the MIT and included: Toshiko Mori (Head of jury, USA); Marc Angélil (Switzerland); Alain Bourguignon (UK); Dana Cuff (USA); Guillaume Habert (Switzerland); Mark Jarzombek (USA); Jeffrey Laberge (Canada); Lola Sheppard (Canada), and Sarah Whiting (USA).

Main category

Gold: The Poreform project by Amy Mielke and Caitlin Taylor, Water Pore Partnership, involves the development of a water absorptive surface and subterranean basin that captures rain runoff, thereby adding more than 75 000 megalitres to Las Vegas’ water supply capacity.

“While designed for a specific site, the project offers a welcome answer to the general problem of water scarcity – a straightforward, but nonetheless beautiful proposition for a global challenge,” said jury member Mark Jarzombek.

Silver: The Rebuilding by Design project aims to limit the impact of future storms and coastal flooding via a raised berm and sequence of public spaces along the water’s edge in New York City. Architects Bjarke Ingels and Kai-Uwe Bergmann, BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, led the consortium that developed the project.

Bronze: The Hi-Fi project picked up the Bronze Award. This involves a zero-carbon structure comprising reflective bricks that was designed by David Benjamin and the Living Architecture Lab and commissioned by the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program.

Acknowledgement prizes

• Chrysanthemum Building: Affordable residential urban infill development, by Sheila Kennedy and J. Frano Violich of Kennedy & Violich Architecture.
• Heritage Reframed: University building renovation and extension, by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner of NADAA.
• Divining LA: Digital tool for urban design and water-use planning, by Peter and Hadley Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute.
• In-Closure: Public park and interactive wall for urban revival, by Etienne Feher, Paul Azzopardi and Noé Basch of ABF-lab Architects.

Next generation prizes

Due to the high quality of submissions, this year six projects were recognised in Holcim’s ‘Next Generation’ category for the first time.

• 1^st – Trash for Use: Municipal center for harvesting utility from waste, by Debbie Chen.
• 2^nd – Machine Landscape: Coal mining sites for hydro-pump electricity storage, by Kenya Endo of Atelier Dreiseitl Asia.
• 3^rd – Pleura Pod: Air purification wall transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen, by Beomki Lee, Suk Lee and Daeho Lee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• 4^th – Timber-Link: Interlocking panelized timber building system, by Jonathan Enns of Enns Design/solidoperations.
• 5^th – Evolutionary Infrastructure: Adaptive reuse of a parking structure for cultural activities, by Mark Turibius Jongman-Sereno, Harvard University, Mira Irawan, New York University, and David O’Brien, Iowa State University.
• 6^th – Latex Formwork: Concrete wall panel construction method, by Namjoo Kim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Further information about the winning projects can be found at www.holcimfoundation.org.

Adapted from press release by Louise Fordham

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/the-americas/26092014/north-america-winners-of-holcim-awards-2014-559/