The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has revealed the Grand Prize Winners of the 2025 Holcim Awards, selecting one outstanding project from each of the five global regions to showcase the most innovative and impactful approaches to sustainable design. This year's edition marks a significant change in the award structure, introducing the new Grand Prize format that replaces the previous tiered ranking system to better recognize diverse regional contexts and eliminate hierarchical distinctions between projects.
The prestigious awards were evaluated by distinguished juries led by internationally renowned architects including Sou Fujimoto for the Asia Pacific region, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen for Europe, Sandra Barclay for Latin America, Lina Ghotmeh for the Middle East and Africa, and Jeanne Gang for North America. The selected winning projects exemplify the Foundation's core principles of holistic, transformational, and transferable sustainable design solutions.
The 2025 laureates demonstrate remarkably diverse approaches to addressing sustainability challenges across different geographical and cultural contexts. The winning projects span a wide range of typologies and strategies, from adaptive reuse and cultural regeneration initiatives to climate-resilient public infrastructure and comprehensive heritage conservation programs. Each project offers unique insights into how sustainability can be interpreted and implemented to address specific regional needs and environmental conditions.
In the Asia Pacific region, Form.3 Architects' Old Dhaka Central Jail Conservation project in Bangladesh transforms a historically significant but abandoned detention facility into a vibrant public space that integrates seamlessly within the city's extremely dense urban environment. The project employs innovative passive cooling strategies, thoughtful adaptive reuse of existing colonial-era structures, and sustainable landscape interventions designed to significantly reduce energy consumption while enhancing local biodiversity. The restoration process involved extensive community participation, engaging local craftspeople to preserve traditional construction techniques including lime-mortar plaster application and cast-iron jali screen fabrication, thereby reinforcing cultural continuity and traditional building skills.
Europe's winning project, Art-Tek Tulltorja, represents a collaborative effort by Rafi Segal AU, Office of Urban Drafters, Org Permanent Modernity, and Studio RevArt to transform a former brick manufacturing facility in Pristina, Kosovo, into a cutting-edge art and technology hub. This ambitious 16-hectare redevelopment prioritizes comprehensive sustainability measures including advanced solar energy systems, extensive use of recycled industrial materials, carbon-storing timber construction methods, and extensive native planting programs to improve local air quality and support biodiversity recovery. The project serves as a community-oriented destination featuring maker studios, educational facilities, and public parks designed to support youth employment opportunities and strengthen social cohesion in a post-conflict urban environment.
Latin America's laureate, designed by Andrade Morettin Arquitetos Associados and Sauermartins, presents an innovative Schools for Flood-Prone Areas model in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This groundbreaking approach to public education infrastructure demonstrates how to design resilient buildings that work with, rather than against, natural flooding conditions. The design elevates new classrooms, laboratories, and libraries above existing school structures, while transforming the flood-prone ground level into flexible open-air playground and sports areas. The project includes a shaded rooftop terrace that provides additional outdoor learning space during normal conditions and functions as an emergency community shelter during crisis situations.
The Middle East and Africa region winner, Qalandiya: the Green Historic Maze by Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation in Palestine, showcases an incremental and highly sustainable approach to revitalizing a historic village center that has suffered from prolonged neglect due to complex political circumstances. The project utilizes traditional construction knowledge, local stone masonry techniques, and indigenous building materials to carefully restore deteriorated structures for renewed public use. The restoration incorporates comprehensive climate-responsive strategies including passive insulation systems, innovative graywater separation and treatment, rainwater harvesting infrastructure, permeable paving solutions, and extensive native plant communities to strengthen environmental resilience.
North America's winning project, Moakley Park by Stoss Landscape Urbanism in Boston, reimagines one of the city's largest waterfront areas as a resilient and universally accessible public landscape. The comprehensive design incorporates protective berms, extensively restored coastal marsh ecosystems, and sophisticated stormwater management systems to significantly reduce flood risk while supporting local biodiversity recovery. The project includes more than 500 new trees and extensive native plantings that help mitigate urban heat island effects while strengthening local ecological habitats and wildlife corridors.
The evaluation juries praised each winning project for different but equally compelling reasons. The Asia Pacific jury recognized the Old Dhaka project's tremendous positive impact in an extremely challenging dense urban context, noting how it transforms a former place of punishment into a space where residents can genuinely enjoy improved city life. The European jury commended Art-Tek Tulltorja as a powerful catalyst for sustainable urban revival, particularly appreciating its holistic vision spanning environmental remediation, cultural programming, and economic development in post-conflict Kosovo.
The Latin America jury was impressed by the Schools project's elegant simplicity in solving complex climate adaptation challenges, highlighting how modest design interventions can provide transferable blueprints for sustainable construction in vulnerable regions. The Middle East and Africa jury praised Qalandiya's thoughtful approach to heritage conservation and its remarkable sensitivity to complex social and political contexts. The North America jury recognized Moakley Park as an ambitious yet pragmatic model for urban resilience that successfully addresses coastal vulnerability while providing equitable access to high-quality public spaces.
Together, these five winning projects illustrate the varied and innovative ways that sustainability principles are being interpreted, adapted, and implemented across different geographical, cultural, and economic contexts worldwide. They demonstrate that sustainable design excellence can take many forms while consistently addressing the urgent need for environmentally responsible, socially inclusive, and economically viable solutions to contemporary global challenges.
