Holcim Foundation Awards: Promoting sustainable construction

We sat down with Laura Viscovich, Executive Director of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, to talk about the significance of the Holcim Foundation Awards, with the 2025 cycle now open for submissions from architects, urban planners and engineers.

Founded in 2003, the Holcim Foundation was one of the first organizations to define and promote the key principles of sustainability for the built environment. It is grounded in three core sustainable design principles: it should be holistic, transformational and transferable.

The industry-leading Holcim Foundation Awards came about to promote these principles, and recognize and support the people who are change accelerators for sustainable construction.

Why are the Holcim Foundation Awards significant?

This year marks 20 years of the Holcim Foundation Awards, which have been at the forefront of recognizing and promoting sustainable construction since their founding. They are the most significant awards for sustainable design, because they cover the whole globe. Our jury members and project submissions come from all corners of the world.

We’re also proud to note that eligibility for the awards is completely open. It’s free to apply and self-nominating, so anyone with a project they’re passionate about can take part. This ensures that the awards don’t become a closed loop dependent on insider knowledge or connections, and that fresh and new ideas always have a place to shine.

Laura Viscovich, Executive Director of the Holcim Foundation

The benefits for winners are significant, as they develop a greatly expanded network and experience clear career and project advancement. For example, the 2025 winners will be invited to the Venice Biennale of Architecture, where they will be able to connect with key players in the field. Plus, winners share a prize pool of USD 1 million to advance their work.

What’s so exciting about the 2025 awards cycle?

We’re lucky to have outstanding juries every year, and for the 2025 awards cycle we’re very excited to have some truly illustrious experts serving as chairs:

Sou Fujimoto, Founder & Principal, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Japan
Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Founding Partner, Snøhetta, Norway
Sandra Barclay, Principal, Barclay & Crousse Architecture, Peru Lina Ghotmeh, Founding Principal,
Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture, France
Jeanne Gang, Founding Partner, Studio Gang, USA

This year we have also implemented a new system for the awarding of the prizes. Instead of giving Gold, Silver, Bronze and Acknowledgement awards for each region, we have equalized the prizes. Then one winner from each region will also receive a Special Mention. This allows us to recognize a broader spectrum of projects.

And these projects vary enormously – from an urban biodiversity project to transform the gardens of London’s Natural History Museum to an innovative “stacked” sports center in France promoting sustainable and socially inclusive design or a high-performance, energy-efficient urban tower in Australia.

Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom

Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom

Cathédrale des Sports Bordeaux, France

Cathédrale des Sports Bordeaux, France

High-Performance Tower, Australia

Since each project is unique – in terms of its context, history, economics and climate – we want to be able to identify and reward different typologies of built environment structures. These projects can be small or large scale, but they will all still be judged on the basis of the Holcim Foundation’s goals and principles for sustainable construction.

What is the legacy of the awards?

Since the beginning, the Holcim Foundation has worked to identify and promote new talent, and that talent has certainly gone far. Three of our past winners – Alejandro Aravena, Francis Kéré and Wang Shu – went on to win the Pritzker Prize, one of the most important architectural awards in the world. The Awards have supported groundbreaking projects like the Big U in New York City, a coastal protection program that improves the local community’s access to nature. Just recently, we launched “Words with Winners”, an interview series with past winners to learn more about these success stories.

Through these awards, we have been able to build a global community around forward-looking changemakers dedicated to navigating the path to a more sustainable future. We try to serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration for a new generation, as there is still plenty of work to be done.

The Holcim Foundation Awards were pioneering 20 years ago, but we’re not comfortable resting on our laurels. The awards now focus on design solutions for today that are already out in the world just waiting to be discovered and showcased. The Holcim Foundation’s aim is to help find, accelerate and scale up these solutions, for a sustainable future.