Global Award for Sustainable Architecture

Each year the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture recognizes five architects who share both the principles of sustainable development and a participatory architectural approach to the needs of society, in both the northern and the southern hemispheres.
In 2014 Christopher Alexander was one of the five, recognized as a seminal figure amongst architectural theoreticians and critics of the authoritarian city and industrialised habitat. The author of “Pattern Languages” has devoted a lifetime of research and teaching to a question which is more contemporary than ever: How can we transpose the qualities of vernacular architecture and cities into the laboratories of participatory conception?
The awards were part of a three-day Symposium in the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine and the Palais de Chaillot / Auditorium. Two round table discussions were organized, the one titled “Teaching/Learning architecture in the making” on 20-May-2014, and the other titled “People’s culture, a resource for contemporary architecture?” on 21-May-2014.