Connatural: The Latest Architecture and News

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has announced the 20 winning projects of the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards, recognizing contributions to sustainable design and construction across five regions: Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and North America. This year's selection spans a broad range of scales, from a 200-square-meter semi-permanent school in a Kenyan forest to major urban regeneration initiatives in Madrid, Dhaka, and Shenzhen, reflecting the diversity and reach of sustainable architecture today. This year introduces a new Grand Prize format, replacing the traditional Gold, Silver, and Bronze rankings. Each region will now honor one Grand Prize winner, emphasizing excellence without comparison and acknowledging the diverse approaches to sustainability.

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Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) Director Dirk Denison and 2023 MCHAP Jury Chair Sandra Barclay (Barclay & Crousse) have just announced the six finalists for the 2023 Americas Prize. The award recognizes the best-built works of architecture in the Americas completed between December 2018 and June 2021. This represents the latest stage of the fourth cycle of the MCHAP, launched in Venice, Italy, in August 2021. On March 24, 2023, the jury will announce the winners of the the 2023 Americas Prize. The authors of the winning project are set to receive a $50,000 fund for research along with a publication.

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In 2013, Medellín (Colombia) was declared the most innovative city in the world as part of the City of the Year Competition, organized by the Wall Street Journal. It competed alongside metropolises like New York and Tel Aviv.

The Antioquian capital has become one of the most advanced technological and intellectual epicenters in Colombia, not to mention the important urban development that has occurred in the city since the beginning of 2010. The city’s mobility-orientated integrated infrastructure together with interventions of high social impact have turned Medellín into the center of the debate on the growth and development of Latin American cities.

The following projects tell you the story of a city that bet on urban consolidation through quality public spaces and projects that encouraged citizen management by supporting the development of marginalized areas in a process of social reconstruction, where architecture has played an important role as a spatial formulation tool.

Led by American Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis, the jury of the global Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction has announced the winners of the sixth edition of the global competition at a handover ceremony at the 2021 Venice Biennale in Italy.

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We are accustomed to seeing photographs in which architecture is recorded without any occupants, or perhaps captured only with models who give scale to the spaces shown. However, in recent years architectural photographers have increasingly decided to humanize the houses they document, presenting not only their architecture, but also those who inhabit these buildings. In this week's best photos, we present a selection of 15 houses captured by renowned photographers such as Luc Roymans, Adrien Williams and Fernando Schapochnik.