Celebrating groundbreaking projects that showcase sustainable construction practices, this year’s winners of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction 2023 highlight innovative approaches across various scales, forms, geographies, and forms. The Gold Prize for North America was awarded to Partisans Architects and Well-Grounded Real Estate with their high-tech, low-cost modular housing solution for urban living in Toronto. In a video interview for ArchDaily, Jonathan Diamond from Well-Grounded Real Estate discusses the development of the winning project and the forces that shaped it.
The project reimagines apartment living through an all-electric 12-story mixed-use rental development in Ontario. Addressing Toronto’s housing crisis head-on, the development aims to provide an affordable rental accommodation model. The design utilizes an existing structure to activate a “long-term lens,” challenging the designers to think about the building's lifecycle 20-30 years into the future.
Designed in collaboration with Partisans Architects and CREE Buildings, the development utilizes an exterior single-loaded corridor system surrounding a central courtyard. These hallways provide social spaces where residents can interact with their neighbors, and allow sunlight into the unit layouts and cross-ventilation. According to Jonathan Diamond, this project is the first in Canada to be fully heated and cooled through a radiant slab in the ceiling. This system, combined with the CREE Building model ensures high sustainability and cost effectiveness.
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Winners Announced for the 2023 International Holcim AwardsUltimately, Well-Grounded Real Estate aims to create a system of building, instead of individual projects. Through using economies of scale, they believe they can innovate while still reducing costs and increasing quality over time. Offering larger units at mid-market rents, the project challenges the traditional notions of sustainability and ties it directly with affordability and economic viability. The building boasts low energy bills, water bills, and electric bills, “benefiting both people and the environment.”
Craig Dykers, founder of Snøhetta and member of the jury for the Holcim Awards, praised the winning project for its intelligent and sustainable planning. Additionally, Dykers believes that the development holds a unique power by creating a replicable model that addresses the commercial pressures of building affordable housing. With the majority of the winning projects from North America located in a 200-mile strip between the United States and Canada, Craig Dykers emphasizes the importance of knowledge sharing between countries and believes that architects should eventually “see a huge sharing between the whole of the regions.”
The 2023 Holcim Awards also recognized other projects in the North American region with the Maritime Innovation Center by Miller Hull Partnerships as the Silver Winner, Kaiser Borsari Hall by Perkins and Will as the Bronze Winner, and an acknowledgment awarded for the Muscowpetung Powwow Arbour Oxbow Architecture and School of Architecture. For the Middle East and Africa, ArchDaily announced that the founders of Deroché Strohmayer won the gold medal for the design of Surf Ghana Collective. ArchDaily also had a chance to sit down with Xu Tiantian of DnA_Design and Architecture, who received the Gold Prize for Asia-Pacific for transforming the earth fortresses of China’s Fujian Province.
You can now register on the Holcim Awards 2025 page, where individuals can express their interest and receive notifications when the competition opens.
