Sweco pays tribute to young talents: Sweco Transform Award
Published on: March 10, 2023
In 2022, Sweco Denmark launched the ‘Sweco Transform Award’, directed towards graduating students within architecture, engineering, and construction in their final year of study. The award recognizes the best and most innovative graduation project contributing to a sustainable transformation of our cities and society. 65 projects from more than 100 students from 13 different educational institutions all over Denmark were sent in.
Five finalists were selected by an internal group of experts. The finalists were then invited to present their projects in front of an audience and a jury. The members of the jury were recognized sustainability specialists from the industry, all of whom themselves have the green acceleration of our cities and communities at the top of their agenda.
After five great presentations and answers to the judges’ sharp questions, the jury agreed to declare Jacob Matthiesen Jørgense, a newly graduated landscape architect from the Aarhus School of Architecture, the winner of the award, and the prize of DKK 50,000 (approximately € 5,000). Jacob had in his graduation project worked on a sustainable transformation of the west coast of Jutland, and his contribution was called “The changing landscape of the coast – Adaptive landscape scenarios for Thorsminde and Nissum Fjord”.
Jacob describes several scenarios for the adaptation of the coast and the fjord to rising seawater and raises criticism of the current coastal protection strategy with continuous sand feeding. He proposes an adaptive and dynamic coastal and fjord protection that creates synergy between future forecasts, economic conditions, and current climate initiatives – and for this he won the award, according to the jury’s motivation:
Jacob questions our normal approach to securing and climate adapting our cities, coasts and fjords. In his thesis, he challenges the habitual thinking of coastal protection at all costs and showed through scenarios how we can instead invite the water in and use it actively as a resource in a coastal and fjord landscape, which historically has nevertheless been changeable. At the same time, Jacob delivered a professional and convincing pitch on stage in Sweco’s atrium.
The jury consisted of:
- Harpa Birgisdóttir, Professor of building sustainability at BUILD AAU
- Dan Johannes Pham, Co-founder and sustainability expert at the property development company Home.Earth
- Johan Hallgren Madsen, Head of sustainability at NREP
- Frederik Waitz Søborg, Deputy Director / Green Building Council Denmark
- Dariush Rezai, CEO Sweco Denmark