Global Award for Sustainable Architecture

DORTE MANDRUP

Dorte Mandrup, born in 1961, acquired a global reputation thanks to the beauty of the projects that she leads in extreme climates and in locations that, like the glaciers of Greenland, have a universal value and that she herself calls “irreplaceable”.
Dorte Mandrup addresses ecological building like a science. If she uses wood and thatch rather than materials that consume energy or pollute, she doesn’t do so for nostalgic reasons. She studies their properties and drives technical innovation as a means of creating an architecture capable of helping societies to address the dire consequences of climate disturbance.
Deeply interested in art and the natural sciences, this architect calls herself a humanist. In the 21st century, this no longer means that human beings are at the centre of the world but, rather, that they have a central responsibility in its preservation. The works of Dorte Mandrup remind us of the “irreplaceability” of nature and make us conscious that we must protect it.

Biography
Dorte Mandrup graduated from the School of Architecture in Aarhus, Denmark in 1991. She started working with architect Henning Larsen before founding her own practice in Copenhagen in 1999. Dorte Mandrup A/S has gained worldwide recognition for winning
several architectural competitions on highly sensitive natural sites, classified as Unesco World Heritage sites.

A professor since 2018, she runs a studio at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Ticino, Switzerland and teaches as a visiting professor at universities, such as Cornell University College of Architecture.

She receieved major awards: the Green Good Design Award, Chicago Athenaeum 2017; Sweden Green Building Awards 2017; Berlin Art Prize for Architecture 2019 Dorte Mandrup presented the work “CONDITIONS”, a reflection on climate and landscape, at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. In 2019 she chaired the jury of the European Mies van der Rohe Award. A former member of the Danish Council of Historic Monuments, she is vice president of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Ilulissat Icefjord Center,
Dorte Mandrup
Ilulissat, Greenland, 2021
© Adam Mørk

The Whale, Dorte Mandrup
Andenes, Norway, 2025
© Dorte Mandrup A/S

Full Fill Homes, Anupama
Kundoo
Auroville, India, 2015
© Sebastiano Giannesini

Wall House,
Anupama Kundoo
Auromodel, Auroville, India,
1997-2000
© Javier Callejas

ANUPAMA KUNDOO

An Indian architect of Bengali origins, Anupama Kundoo, born in 1967, studied in Mumbaï and Berlin. Her office is based in Berlin and Auroville, the famous experimental city in India that was built by Roger Anger and of which she is now the chief planner.
Anupama Kundoo is one of those architects for whom the word “development” is just as important as the word “sustainable”. She rejects the notion that only a minority has access to innovation, inventing well thought out and robust materials and techniques that are right-tech rather than high-tech. In doing this, she advances the cause of local businesses in a resolute support to micro-development.
Her work is a tireless revival of dialogues : between the local and the universal, the ingenuity of tradition and contemporary science, the long history of civilisations and their increasingly unpredictable future. Her architecture is not only beautiful but also inventive, including during the construction phase.

Biography

Anupama Kundoo graduated in architecture from Bombay University in 1989 and began her architectural career with Roger Anger in Auroville. From 1990 to 2002, she learned and developed ecological building techniques and self-development methods. She brought these concerns together in eco-community projects.
Wishing to theorize her work, she obtained a research scholarship from the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, founded by Balkrishna Doshi, in 1996 on the subject of “Urban Eco-community: design and sustainability analysis”. Work resumed in 2005 for a PhD, which she obtained in 2008 at the Technical University of Berlin.
Established in Pondicherry, her architectural practice is now located in Auroville, where she was appointed Chief Urban Planner in 2022.
Currently a professor at the Fachhochschule in Potsdam, Germany, Anupama Kundoo is a guest lecturer and teacher at major universities: Technical University of Berlin, Yale; University, Parsons’ New School for Design in New York; Camilo José Cela University in Madrid.
The reproduction of her Wall House at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012, built with the potters of Auroville, was a huge critical success. She received major awards: the Auguste Perret Prize of the UIA 2021 and the Charles Jencks Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects 2021.

MARTIN RAUCH

It is a sculptor’s material – clay – that led the ceramicist Martin Rauch, born in 1958, to building and architecture. Working in Africa as a volunteer, the young apprentice was fascinated by the beauty of the mud huts. Upon returning to Austria, he rediscovered European clay architecture and its rich cultural and technical traditions and rescued them from oblivion.
His company, Lehm Ton Erde1 (Loam Clay Earth), is dedicated to building with rammed earth and to technological research. As both a convinced ecologist and an aesthete, he extracts the clay on his sites in order to re-establish the connection between building and landscape. This one-man band rolls up his sleeves, invents machines for prefabricating walls and takes on large-scale projects as he ensures the role of rammed earth as a 21st-century material.
Today, Martin Rauch is an expert who is consulted by leading architects: Herzog & de Meuron, Lina Ghotmeh, Anna Heringer, Snohetta…

Biography

Martin Rauch was trained as a ceramist at the Technical College of Stoob, Austria, and then at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1999, he founded Lehm-Ton-Erde, an earthen construction company whose building techniques have evolved from craft to industry.
In 2005, Martin Rauch innovated by building his own house, using waterproof cement layers to protect the walls from erosion. In 2014, he built the Ricola Plant House in Laufen, Switzerland, with architects Herzog & de Meuron, the largest rammedearthen building in Europe. The building was completed in 5 months, made of 666 prefabricated panels, with local clay, extracted 10 km far from the site. In the same year, he built the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, through the assembling of 1500 prefabricated earthen components on site.
He received major awards: Honorary Award of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research 1983, for his experimental approach; European Philippe Rotthier Award 2011, for his participatory method; Special Innovation Award of the Terra Award
2016, for the technical prowess of the Plant House.
Martin Rauch is also dedicated to teaching. He is a professor at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, and at ETH Zurich. He also animated BASEhabitat’s international workshops. He is an honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair “Earth Architecture”.

Rauch House, Martin Rauch
Schlins, Austria, 2008
© Beat Bühler

ERDEN Workshop, Martin Rauch
Schlins, Autriche, 2019
© Hanno Mackowitz

Garden of the third landscape,
creation : Gilles Clément, master builder : Coloco
Saint-Nazaire, France, 2009-2011
© dr

The Garden of the Mediterranean,
Gilles Clément and the gardeners of the Domaine de Rayol,
Domaine du Rayol, Rayol-Canadel-sur-mer, Var, France,
1988 to present
© dr

GILLES CLÉMENT

A horticultural engineer, botanist and landscape architect, Gilles Clément, born
in 1943, is a significant voice in the global ecological debate. Informed by his
profound knowledge, his work embodies a new vision of landscape based upon the unrestricted evolution rather than the mastery of species. And while he values natural and historic sites, Gilles Clément is deeply involved in the ecological and social revival of the ordinary city and its wastelands.
The books of this activist have transformed the views of landscape designers, decision-makers and architects. He has the gift of giving titles that are moving – The Planetary Garden – or political : in his Manifesto of the Third Landscape, nature becomes an alter ego of the “Third Estate” before the French Revolution : unconsidered although there is no future without it.
Gilles Clément believes that it is time to stop exploiting nature and to enhance biodiversity by creating an open field, in which species live and circulate freely.

Biography

Gilles Clément is a horticultural engineer, a landscape designer who graduated from the Institut d’Angers in 1969, as well as a botanist and a gardener,. His life is divided between his activities as a landscape designer, a teacher, and an essayist and writer.
His greatest work is the Domaine du Rayol, where he has been working since 1989. However, it was the Parc André-Citroën in Paris, designed with Allain Provost, that made his approach known to the public in 1992. His major projects are: the garden of the Quai Branly Museum, designed with Patrick Blanc, the gardens of the castles of Blois and Châtenay, the experimental gardens of the ENS of Lyon and of the
agricultural high school of Saint- Herblain, the garden on the roof of the submarine base of Saint-Nazaire, realized with his friends and collegues of the Collectif Coloco.
As a professor at the ENS du Paysage de Versailles since 1979, he was nominated in 2011 at the Chair of Artistic Creation of the Collège de France, inaugurated with a lesson entitled „Gardens, landscape and natural engineering“. He sponsored in 2017 the creation of the degree „Design of anthropized environments“ at the University of Limoges.
Winner of the Grand Prix du Paysage in 1998, he presented in 1999 at the Grande halle de la Villette an exhibition-Manifesto, entitled „The Planetary Garden“. His major writings and theoric works are: „Le Jardin en mouvement“, de la Vallée au
parc André-Citroën, re-published in 2007; „Éloge de la friche“, 1994; „Le Jardin planétaire“, 1999; „Éloge des vagabondes. Herbes, arbres et fleurs à la conquête du monde“, 2002; „Manifeste du Tiers-paysage“, 2004, re-published in 2014; „Le Salon des berces“, 2009; „Notre-Dame-des-Plantes“, 2021.

YALIN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

The Turkish word yalin signifies simplicity and humility. The sober design of the office YALIN, founded in 2011 by the architect Ömer Selçuk Baz, born in 1978, and the urban planner Okan Bal, born in 1967, has both aesthetic and political roots. In Turkey, YALIN challenges what it calls “urban crimes”: the absence of rules and ethics that leads to the destruction of ancient cityscapes in the name of “showcase architecture”, while the urban periphery descends into chaos.
YALIN works widely on restructuring projects for natural and cultural sites, where it develops its simple approach. It roots each project in its milieu, both human and physical. And, in order to build, it visits local quarries and brickworks and revives skills and ways of doing things well.
The organic architecture of YALIN continues to evolve after the completion of a project, in step with the setting in which it is inserted. It is connected with the geography, the genius loci and the human activity.

Biography

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Ömer Selçuk Baz obtained his Bachelor’s degree in architecture in 2002 from Uludağ University in Bursa, Turkey, and then his Master’s degree from the Vienna University of Technology, in Austria. Meanwhile, he worked at Atelier Stelzhammer in Vienna, on housing and shopping center projects. In 2005, he won the 1st Prize in the competition for the headquarters of the Turkish National Bank in Bursa. Now located in Turkey, he founded Yalin Architecture in 2011 with urban planner Okan Bal.
Ömer Selçuk Baz teaches in Istanbul, at Kültür University and Bilgi University.
YALIN achieved major projects: the Troy Museum in Canakkale, the Cappadocia Museum, the Zonguldak Gökgöl Caves Visitor Center, the Manisa Memorial Site project.
YALIN also received major awards: Young Architects of the Year Award 2011, European 40 under 40 Award 2018, National Architecture Award 2020 for the Troy Museum, and EMYA European Museum of the Year 2020.
As a fairly young architect, I came to Istanbul from Vienna to practice architecture.

Zonduldak Caves Visitor Center, Zonguldak Province, 2021.
This center is located at the threshold of the main cave of the large site.
The stone walls dialogue “without competing with a natural wonder
that has taken shape over millions of years”.
© Egemen Karakaya

Zonduldak Caves Visitor Center, Zonguldak Province, 2021.
This center is located at the threshold of the main cave of the large site.
The stone walls dialogue “without competing with a natural wonder
that has taken shape over millions of years”.
© Egemen Karakaya