An ecological park for sustainable research and technology planned for Ortadoğu Sanayi ve Ticaret Merkezi, an industrial zone located in Ankara won the top prize. Creating an attractive communal space for its users with minimum interference to the natural context, the building and landscape design by architects Onat and Zeynep Öktem of ONZ Architects in Turkey incorporates various sustainable features such as natural lighting, geothermal heat pumps, green roofs, passive ventilation and water efficiency/irrigation systems.

At the prize-giving ceremony in Beirut, Howayda Al-Harithy congratulated the Holcim Awards Gold winners for promoting economic growth through innovation in environmental technologies. “The building is conceived as a test bed for sustainable research that explores new techniques in the region pertaining to the use of renewable resources – while establishing a careful balance between the natural and fabricated realm”, she said.

A project conducted in parallel by the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction & City Development (EiABC), Addis Ababa and Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany received Bronze. The project to explore and implement construction techniques that tangibly upgrade housing stock in the city was led by Dirk Donath.

Within this process-oriented project, close to 90% of the building components including prefabricated concrete elements and lightweight eucalyptus frames are produced by local micro and small-scale enterprises. The approach creates the opportunity for skilled employment and capacity building, and also allows homeowners to complete the construction themselves, installing building components and finishes according to their needs.