Winners of the LafargeHolcim Awards Next Generation prizes for North America announced

The Next Generation of the LafargeHolcim Awards recognizes the visionary concepts and bold ideas of young professionals and students. In the competition region of North America, the jury …Conventional brick production requires high temperatures and consumes enormous amounts of energy. The project by Daniel Francisco Gonzalez and Noor Shaikh from Waterloo and Toronto, Canada, proposes a sustainable production method for alternative, sustainably producible materials as insulation and wall veneer. The masonry elements are made of reclaimed cement-kiln dust and agro-industrial byproducts. Fish processing residue is used as a natural binder. The produced blocks will have different colors, weights, and textures depending on the materials used. Above all, production requires little energy. “Our model is based on circular economy,” explains Daniel Francisco Gonzalez. “We use byproducts from other industries as aggregates to produce new quality building materials. We are also reducing the amount of virgin materials needed in construction.” The jury considers this an elegant way of repurposing agro-industrial waste. It promotes the use of local resources, and the blocks being produced can be adapted to different regions of the world. “Even if it is always hard to establish such new building materials at a large scale, the use of waste material from agriculture and aquaculture is ingenious,” finds Marilyne