The Holcim Foundation has announced its 20 winners of the 2025 Awards, highlighting global trends reshaping sustainable design and construction.
The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has announced 20 winning projects for the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards, spanning Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and North America. With a prize pool of USD 1 million, the Awards are among the world’s most significant and generous honors in sustainable architecture.
The Awards recognize sustainability across all scales, from an intimate 200-square-meter semi-permanent school in a Kenyan forest to large and mega-scale urban regeneration projects serving millions of people in cities such as Madrid, Dhaka, and Shenzhen.
SEE THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS
LEARN MORE ON AWARDS WEBSITE
All winners will be showcased at a prestigious event in Venice on November 20, 2025, which will be streamed globally. Attended by many of the design and construction industry’s most important names, the event’s marquee moments will be the announcements of the five regional Grand Prizes, selected by the Awards’ distinguished juries.
Laura Viscovich, Executive Director of the Holcim Foundation, says the winning entries, which were required upon entry to be in development, but not complete, provide a modern definition of best practice in sustainable design.
“This year’s 20 winners use the right materials in the right places, bring communities into the process from day one, and design with nature as an ally,” she says
“The projects are inspiring because the solutions they offer are replicable and implementable – they set a credible path forward for industry.”
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN IN ACTION
Across 20 winning projects, distinct trends emerge that demonstrate the construction sector’s evolving approach to environmental, social, and economic challenges:
Resilient Infrastructure Working With and For Nature
Award-winner Moakley Park in Boston, USA uses berms and restored marshes for protective water infiltration, highlighting how resilient design now involves embracing water rather than simply resisting it. Likewise, in flood-prone Porto Alegre, Brazil, another winner, a school designed by Andrade Morettin Arquitetos, elevates classrooms above ground level and utilizes the rooftop as an emergency shelter. Winning projects in Madrid, Spain, and Medellín, Colombia, showcase the positive impact of ecological restoration, with the Spanish capital’s The Southern River Parks being an urban-scale example of using intelligent landscape design to counter desertification in the face of climate change.
Design as a Healing Tool
The Awards revealed architecture’s emerging role as a healing tool in regions affected by war and instability. Winning entry, Art-Tek Tulltorja in Pristina, Kosovo, transforms a former brick factory into a vibrant meeting place, demonstrating how construction can contribute to community recovery while addressing heritage preservation in fragile territories. Another winner, Qalandiya in the Palestinian Territories, shows how incremental village restoration can honor the past while strengthening cultural identity and reducing construction carbon footprint. Healing also rhymes with restoring what already exists: in Bangladesh, the conservation and adaptive reuse development of the Old Dhaka Central Jail is recast as an urban oasis that provides much-needed civic space.
Low-carbon, Circular Approaches
Climate action and low-carbon design were also dominant themes in the winning entries. The Buffalo Crossing Visitor Centre in Winnipeg, Canada, a Passive House-certified gateway to a restored quarry site, demonstrates that achieving ultra-low-carbon status is possible through the use of innovative materials and passive design strategies. Brookside Secondary School in Asaba, Nigeria, utilizes concrete frames infilled with locally crafted brick walls, demonstrating that hybrid approaches can deliver both structural performance and significantly reduced embodied carbon. Winning project Healing Through Design – a Kintsugi-inspired Health Center in Bengaluru showcases the value of low-tech circularity: locally sourced, recycled materials and native planting form a living, green facade.
NEW GRAND PRIZE FORMAT
2025 introduces a Grand Prize in each region (replacing the former ranking of Gold, Silver and Bronze) to honor excellence without diminishing other approaches. The Foundation’s four goals – Uplifting Places, Healthy Planet, Thriving Communities, and Viable Economics – along with guiding principles (Holistic, Transformational, Transferable) continue to steer juries, which for the 2025 cycle, were chaired by Sou Fujimoto (APAC), Kjetil Trædal Thorsen (EU), Sandra Barclay (LATAM), Lina Ghotmeh (MEA), and Jeanne Gang (NAM).
“We moved from the familiar Gold–Silver–Bronze structure to a system that recognizes the best in class in each region through a Grand Prize award,” explained Viscovich.
“This evolution reflects our commitment to celebrating the full diversity of excellent responses without diminishing any approach. Rather than ranking projects against each other, we place them all in an equal spotlight and then use the Grand Prize to highlight those the jury found demonstrated the greatest impact.”
PRIZE STRUCTURE
Each of the 20 winning projects receives USD 40,000, recognizing their outstanding contributions to sustainable construction. Additionally, one project from each of the five global regions will be honored with a Grand Prize, receiving an extra USD 40,000—bringing their total award to USD 80,000.
These five regional Grand Prize winners, representing the most impactful projects from Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and North America, will be announced at the Awards ceremony in Venice on November 20, 2025.
While all winners are celebrated equally for their excellence, the Grand Prize highlights those projects that the juries determined demonstrate the greatest transformative potential for advancing sustainable construction globally.
TUNE IN
The regional Grand Prizes will be announced at the Holcim Foundation Awards ceremony in Venice. Livestream available: https://awards.holcimfoundation.org/home (15:00 UTC, November 20, 2025)
