LafargeHolcim Research in Practice Grants presented in Mexico City

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND — More than 50 young architects and engineers from 25 countries participated in the international LafargeHolcim Next Generation Awards Lab hosted by Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City recently and three project teams received a two-year Research in Practice Grant (RPG) of US$75,000 based on the evaluation of their project at the lab.

Next Generation Awards Lab participants had previously been selected as prize-winning teams of the five regional LafargeHolcim Awards competitions in 2017.

The lab offered a platform to further develop cutting-edge projects and exchange visionary ideas on the future of sustainable construction, states a release issued by the LafargeHolcim Foundation.

The core aim of the RPG program is to mentor and financially support emerging professionals to conduct practice-related research in the field of sustainable construction, adds the release.

A grant was awarded to:

• Heidi Boulanger (van Eeden) at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), to pursue her research on integrating production facilities for construction material into rural communities, creating new urban nodes;
• Stefano Romagnoli, Juan Cruz and Tomas Pont of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina, who will use their grant to advance an infrastructure-landscape project for the generation of electric power by harnessing tidal currents; and
• Nada Nafeh of the American University in Cairo, Egypt, who will further develop an approach to improve living conditions in informal settlements; her vision has the potential to transform architecture from the “design of products” to the “design of processes,” the release indicates.

The lab included an introduction by Marc Angelil, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and presentations by leading Mexican architects Tatiana Bilbao, founder and principal of Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, and Michel Rojkind, design principal and founder of Rojkind Arquitectos.

The next competition, the sixth International LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction, opens for entries in mid-2019 at www.lafargeholcim-awards.org.