The Holcim Foundation finally announced today the three winning projects for their global 2015 Holcim Awards. Every three years, the awards competition seeks architectural design interventions that address sustainable building and construction issues worldwide. As a global competition, the Holcim Awards highlight people's different lifestyles and draws attention to their specific communal issues.

At the same time, it promotes the innovative sustainable strategies that architects and designers can create in effort to improve a community's quality of life. The Holcim Awards jury -- chaired by Harvard GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi -- chose the three grand-prize winning teams, who each won a trophy and shared the $350,000 prize. 

The $200,000 Gold prize went to "Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park | Medellín, Colombia" by Colombian team Mario Camargo, Luis Tombé, Colectivo720, with Juan Calle and Horacio Valencia, and EPM Group (Empresas Públicas de Medellín). Their proposal transforms a decommissioned water reservoir into a park in Medellín, Colombia.

Silver ($100,000) went to "Post War Collective: Community library and social recuperation" in the rural town of Ambepussa, Sri Lanka by Milinda Pathiraja, Ganga Ratnayake, and Robust Architecture Workshop. The team designed a community library that aims to reintegrate soldiers into post-civil war Sri Lankan society and strengthen the overall community's social fabric.

Last but not least, the $50,000 Bronze award went to "The Dryline: Urban flood protection infrastructure in New York City" by Bjarke Ingels and Kai-Uwe Bergmann, BIG, and Amsterdam-based One Architecture and their team. If this looks familiar, it was also a winner in the U.S. Department of HUD's Rebuild by Design competition last year. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, this proposal introduces a large-scale integrated flood protection system to strengthen NYC's resiliency for future storms.

For its fourth cycle, the 2015 Holcim Awards received over 6,000 submissions during the call of entries. The jury selected the global winners out of the 15 projects that won prizes in each of the five regional competitions that took place in the later half of 2014: Asia Pacific, Africa & Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

All images courtesy of Holcim Awards 2015.