Five young teams from across the Asia Pacific have been awarded LafargeHolcim Awards’ Next Generation prizes for “visionary concepts” that advance sustainable design.
Winning first prize, worth US$25,00, was Soledad Patiño, a student of architecture and urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design whose project “brings social and economic legitimacy to waterfront districts of Mumbai through a new network of sustainable infrastructure.”
The second prize winner, Mumbai architect Lorenzo Fernandes, also focused on India’s largest city, envisioning an “acupunctural design intervention to improve the sustainability of Mumbai’s informal settlements.” Second prize was worth US$20,000.
From the second prize winner Lorenzo Fernandes’s entry.
Third prize (US$15,000) went to Bangkok architect Dolathep Chetty of the practice Architects 49 House Design Limited, who developed a proposal “to tackle the coastal erosion and ecosystem threats in the northern Gulf of Thailand while promoting sustainable fishing and tourism.”
The fourth prize was awarded to two teams, which each received US$10,00. One went to Gani Wiratama, Nicholas Rodriques, and Rionaldi Gunari, students at the Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia, for a project that “upgrades vernacular river sanitation systems in Jakarta to reconcile ecosystems with the local community.” The other went to architect Divya Jyoti, of Pune-based practice PMA Madhushala for “A multifunctional green facade system implemented in Pune coherently responds to environmental, cultural, and economic concerns.”
Third prize winning design from Bangkok architect Dolathep Chetty.
The LafargeHolcim Awards aim to promote sustainability in the construction sector, noting that buildings accounts for 40 percent of both energy and material consumption worldwide and that “in view of climate change and diminishing resources, new approaches are needed along the entire value chain of the construction industry.”
Every three years, the competition is held in five world regions and then globally, with the prize money totalling US$2 million. A total of 4,742 projects from 134 countries were submitted for this year’s awards. The Next Generation category and is open to participants up to 30 years of age.
“Many of the entries that we discussed had provocative ideas that were both thoughtful and forward-looking,” said Nirmal Kishnani, professor of architecture at the School of Design and Environment at the National University of Singapore and head of the jury for the Asia Pacific region.
“We were preoccupied with a few questions: How is this an intelligent assessment of a problem? How is this an insightful solution? How is this specific to the challenges of the region?”
For more on the winners, head here.
