Building Sense Now, is a global initiative to connect and activate like-minded individuals and design practices in Architecture, Engineering and Construction from across the world who believe that better design solutions are a crucial element to transform our cities and help create more resilient, sustainable and climate positive buildings.
Some of the biggest challenges design practices face are not always technical or practical but can be more about making the case for doing things differently to clients, investors, regulators, co-professionals or supply chains and then integrating great ideas into the design process and project delivery.
An award for new, innovative design practices from across the world
With the Building Sense Now Global Award we are looking for new, innovative design practices from across the world that achieve challenging design goals and address climate change and sustainability issues. We want to give recognition to practices and individuals whose work has made a difference and demonstrated leadership at whatever level or scale.
This award focuses on the people and their design process as well as the “philosophy and ethic” driver behind it rather than its final resolution in the built project. We are looking for disruptive thinking that demonstrates the potential to tackle big scale issues in a range of fields, including for example: buildings, urban renewal and transformation projects, urban systems, city operating and governance, urban ecology or human centered place making and well-being.
The winner of 2021: Anupama Kundoo
On 11 November 2021, the Building Sense Now Global Award was presented at a digital awards ceremony. Prof. Dr. Anupama Kundoo was the winner of this year’s award. The multi-award-winning Indian architect has already realised more than 100 projects, most of them in India, from her offices in Pondicherry and Berlin. She also holds a professorship for structural design at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.
Her projects have a special focus on social issues and take into account people’s need for a place of refuge in a meaningful way. She deliberately uses simple, natural materials, which she sensitively transforms into functional structures. She received this year’s award from the international initiative Building Sense Now for her exemplary, culturally, climatically and socially appropriate type of architecture. Kundoo succeeds Anna Heringer, who won the inaugural competition in 2019.
“With Anupama Kundoo, we are pleased to be able to award an inspiring personality whose projects demonstrate what carefully crafted architecture can produce when it puts people at the centre,” says Dr Christine Lemaitre, CEO of the DGNB and co-initiator of Building Sense Now. “With her work, she is a perfect ambassador for everything our initiative stands for.”
