Infrastructure

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev – APA-Economics. The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition offering a total of USD 2 million in prize money is open to: sustainable building and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure projects; and materials, products and construction technologies. The Awards are an initiative of the Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

Entries must be submitted online at www.holcimawards.org by March 23, 2011. The competition celebrates innovative, future-oriented and tangible projects and visions from around the globe and is open to anyone involved with approaches that contribute towards a more sustainable built environment. The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition is comprised of five regional competitions in 2010/11 and the global phase in 2012. Step-by-step instructions on how to enter the competition are available at: www.holcimawards.org/guides

The main category of the competition is open to architects, planners, engineers, project owners, builders and construction firms that showcase sustainable responses to technological, environmental, socioeconomic and cultural issues with contemporary building and construction. Projects are eligible for the competition if they have reached an advanced stage of design. Construction (or commercial production in the case of materials, products and construction technologies) must not have started before July 1, 2010. In addition, the Holcim Awards seeks visions and ideas for the “Next Generation” category, open to student projects created within university programs at final year bachelor level or above (including master’s and PhD).

Submissions in both categories are evaluated by independent juries, using five “target issues” to define sustainable construction. Three of these align with the triple bottom line concept of balanced social, environmental and economic performance. The rest cover contextual and aesthetic impact, and innovation and transferability. For further details see: www.holcimawards.org/target.

The Holcim Awards competitions are conducted in partnership with some of the world’s leading technical universities. The jury includes architects and experts, who evaluate and choose the winning sustainable construction projects from five competition regions. A full list of jury members is available at: www.holcimawards.org/jury

In the 2nd Holcim Awards competition 2008/2009, almost 5000 projects from 120 countries were submitted. The global Holcim Awards winners included the following projects: Holcim Awards Gold – River remediation and urban development scheme, Fez, Morocco. Silver – Low-impact greenfield university campus, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Bronze – Sustainable planning for a rural community, Beijing, China. “Innovation” prize – Self-contained day labor station, San Francisco, USA. Details about the 100 prize-winning projects from both the 1st and 2nd competition cycles are available at: www.holcimawards.org

The Holcim Foundation is supported by Holcim Ltd and its Group companies in around 70 countries and is independent of its commercial interests. Holcim is one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates as well as further activities such as ready-mix concrete and asphalt including services. In 2009 the Group was confirmed as a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh time in succession.

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