Rafi Segal Among Winners of the Holcim Foundation Awards 2025
The project’s central plaza opens up a civic space for gathering, dialogue, and cultural life.
Rafi Segal A+U, led by Rafi Segal, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism in the MIT Department of Architecture, is among the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards Winners for their project “Art-Tek Tulltorja” in Pristina, Kosovo. The awards highlight projects that demonstrate measurable impact across its four goals — Healthy Planet, Thriving Communities, Uplifting Places, and Viable Economics.
“In post-conflict Kosovo, Art-Tek Tulltorja stands as a symbol of both past and future: a rehabilitation of a prominent industrial site in the heart of the city, and an investment in designs for new buildings and urban spaces for the creative fields as way to shape the identity and image of the future Pristina,” says Segal.
The team also included Office of Urban Drafters (OUD+Architects), ORG Permanent Modernity (founded by Alexander D’Hooghe, former associate professor of architecture and former director of the Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT), and Studio Rev (founded by Marisa Morán Jahn SM '07).
Winning entry Art-Tek Tulltorja transforms a derelict brick factory in Pristina into an art and technology hub, championing adaptive reuse and cultural regeneration in a post-conflict context. The project emphasizes sustainability through extensive solar energy, recycled industrial materials, carbon-storing timber structures, and abundant greenery, enhancing air quality and biodiversity. A vibrant, community-centered space, Tulltorja offers makers studios, educational facilities, and public parks, addressing youth employment and social cohesion.
Strategically linking Pristina’s city center with historically underserved neighborhoods, the redevelopment aims to rehabilitate a former industrial site into a 16-hectare “bricks to bites” urban oasis. It positions itself as an ecological, economic, socially inclusive landmark for Kosovo, offering a transferable model for urban revitalization and sustainable growth across similar European contexts.
“Too often, the arts are value-engineered out of city-wide projects and become the last things that are sprinkled on top,” said Prishtina Mayor Përparim Rama. “Yet the arts are absolutely critical to how we understand ourselves, how we continue to express ourselves, how we foster democracy. I’m thrilled that Art-Tek Tulltorja not only centers artistic and technological innovation in an industrial heritage site at the heart of Pristina — and is designed by an interdisciplinary team of artists, architects, and urbanists.”
The regional Grand Prizes will be announced at the Holcim Foundation Awards ceremony in Venice, Italy, and livestreamed on ArchDaily on November 20, 2025. The complete list of award recipients is available on the Holcim Foundation website.
The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to support people who are change accelerators for sustainable construction. In addition to its flagship Awards program, the Foundation partners with academics and industry-leading practitioners to create educational opportunities and organizes events to facilitate the exchange of ideas and best practices.
Livestream available: https://awards.holcimfoundation.org/ (15:00 UTC, November 20, 2025)
“The project reflects the power of architecture to transform the city through design, while remediating a brownfield site, resolving environmental risks of flooding and landslides, creating much needed accessible green space, and rehabilitating local ecologies" -- Rafi Segal
