The winners of the 2014 Holcim Awards for North America were recently announced in Toronto. The 13 winning projects share in more than USD 300,000 prize money, and illustrate how sustainable construction continues to evolve – developing more sophisticated and multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing the building and construction industry.
A Toronto project won a USD 25,000 Acknowledgement Prize. Entitled “Heritage Reframed” this proposed university building renovation and extension project by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner of NADAAA in Boston, Massachusetts provides a new home for the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design on the site of a culturally significant 19th-century structure. The project’s basic objectives are to rehabilitate existing urban, landscape and architectural elements – and to demonstrate the university’s aim to foreground sustainability as part of its pedagogic program via state-of-the-art construction materials and energy systems. Other parties involved in the project are: Erik Olsen of Transsolar in New York; Tas Candaras of A.M. Candaras in Woodbridge, Ontario; Claudina Sula of Adamson Associates Architects in Toronto; Barry Charnish of Entuitive Corporation; Shaili Pytel of Mulvey & Banani International in Toronto; Marc Ryan of Public Work in Toronto; Phil Bastow of The Mitchell Partnership; David Rulff of MMM Group in Toronto; Andrew Pruss of ERA Architects in Toronto; and Jim Broomfield.
The “Next Generation” 4th prize of USD 7,500 was awarded to Timber-Link, an interlocking panelized timber building system intended for Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Designed by Jonathan Enns of Enns Design/solidoperations in Toronto, Timber-Link uses cross-laminated timber (CLT) to form a flexible system of clustered inhabitable cells. Building panels are prefabricated with insulation and cladding installed before assembly, thus expediting erection and reducing the need for skilled labour on site – especially for situations requiring speedy construction such as disaster relief. The system can be deployed at different scales, configurations and circumstances. Layouts can vary through stacking and/or telescoping.
For a complete list of winners, please visit www.holcimfoundation.org/Awards/regional-holcim-awards-2014-north-america/Winners.