What is Sustainable
Architecture?

Foreword

Competition organisers

Buildner is pleased to announce the results of its annual essay competition, "What is Sustainable Architecture?", organised in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS.

There are many ways of designing environmentally – responsible and resource-efficient structures and cities, with amazing innovations and advances introduced every day. Everything from smart homes and photovoltaic glass to centrally organized power networks, modular building, and even self-healing bio concrete.

Architects, start-ups, investors, entrepreneurs, tech companies, and designers are all pioneering holistic new approaches to sustainable architecture, in which new buildings are constructed and maintained throughout their life-cycles with as little negative impact on the environment as possible.

We asked participants what they had to say about sustainable architecture. Buildner and its jury sought thoughts, insight, and research that shed light on new ideas related to sustainable design.

Builder worked with a jury panel with a range of experiences in sustainability: Vichera Heang, the Head of the Department of Architecture at Paragon International University, Phnom Penh, researches sustainability and the traditional Cambodian house; Lydia Kallipoliti, an architect, engineer, scholar and an Assistant Professor at the Cooper Union in New York, is the author of The Architecture of Closed Worlds (2018), the editor of EcoRedux; Design Remedies for an Ailing Planet (AD 2011) and the Head Curator of the upcoming Tallinn Architecture Biennale and the principal of ANAcycle thinktank; and Rituparna Simlai, Principal of Studio Arth LLC, based in Miami, USA and New Delhi, India, whose practice as an Landscape Architect has focused on integrating parametric technology with form and function while seeking a design  with a greater purpose.

Buildner and its jury panel thank the participants for their submissions, and congratulate the following winners for having their submissions selected for online publication.