The Holcim Foundation has announced the Winners of the Holcim Awards 2014 for North America, the award which recognizes the most innovative and advanced sustainable construction designs. Among the winners are BIG and The Living, with designs which the jury stated showed "sophisticated and multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing the building and construction industry."
The ten recognized projects share over $300,000 in prize money, with the top three projects overall going on to be considered for the global Holcim Awards awards, to be selected in 2015.
Read on after the break for the full list of winners
GOLD PRIZE
Poreform: Water absorptive surface and subterranean basin
Amy Mielke & Caitlin Gucker-Kanter Taylor; Water Pore Partnership
This proposal positions water infrastructure as a civic project, with a system for Las Vegas that both efficiently handles the water that floods the valley when it rains, but also stores this water for the area's usually arid climate.
The project utilizes a pourous concrete surface created using fabric formwork.
SILVER PRIZE
Rebuilding by Design: Urban flood protection infrastructure
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Designed in response to New York's Rebuild by Design Competition, the proposal by BIG creates a protective ribbon of infrastructure along the southern coastline of Manhattan, to prevent a repeat of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Utilizing a combination of berms, barriers and planned flood zones which also act as valuable elements of public space, the project combines everyday civic value with emergency protection.
BRONZE PRIZE
Hy-Fi: Zero carbon emissions compostable structure
David Benjamin; The Living
Through the use of an organic and compostable brick, this installation re-imagines cycles of production, manufacture and waste, creating a closed, sustainable system in place of a wasteful one.
Created for the MoMA PS1 Young Architects' Program, the structure offers a new understanding of the sustainability possible in a merely temporary project.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT PRIZES
Chrysanthemum Building: Affordable residential urban infill development
Sheila Kennedy & Frano Violich; Kennedy & Violich Architecture
Heritage Reframed: University building renovation and extension
Nader Tehrani & Katherine Faulkner; NADAAA
Divining LA: Digital tool for urban design and water-use planning
Peter Arnold & Hadley Arnold; Woodbury University, Arid Lands Institute
In-Closure: Public park and interactive wall for urban revival
Etienne Feher, Paul Azzopardi & Noé Basch; ABF-lab architects - engineers
"NEXT GENERATION" PRIZES
1st Prize: Trash for Use: Municipal center for harvesting utility from waste
Debbie Chen
2nd Prize: Machine Landscape: Coal mining sites for hydro-pump electricity storage
Kenya Endo; Atelier Dreiseitl asia
3rd Prize: Pleura Pod: Air purification wall transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen
Beomki Lee, Suk Lee & Daeho Lee; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4th Prize: Timber-Link: Interlocking panelized timber building system
Jonathan Enns; Enns Design/solidoperations
5th Prize: Evolutionary Infrastructure: Adaptive reuse of a parking structure for cultural activities
Mark Turibius Jongman-Sereno, Mira Irawan & David O’Brien
6th Prize: Latex Formwork: Concrete wall panel construction method
Namjoo Kim - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
