Last night Be Like Brit orphanage in Haiti won the McGraw-Hill / Engineering News Record 2013 Best Global Project Award for Residential / Hospitality projects.  We were honored along with two other community-based efforts in the developing world: the El Rodeo suspension bridge in Nicaragua by Bridges to Prosperity from Denver, and the elegantly simple Schoolhouse South Africa in Johannesburg by Cornell University Sustainable Design.

This is the inaugural year for ENR to honor projects from a global perspective.  The judges were particularly interested in projects that demonstrated creative construction techniques, cultural sensitivity, and sustainability, all of which are evidenced in Be Like Brit, which one judge called an “excellent design that considers the art of the possible in Haiti after the earthquake.”

Five of us, John Thompson and Brian Twomey, our structural engineers from Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Len Gengel and his sister Chris, and me; enjoyed the festivities and the view from the 50^th floor of the McGraw-Hill Building in mid-town Manhattan. But as the ENR editors announced our fellow award winners, which included Rem Koolhaas / ARUP for Beijing’s China Central Television Building, Michael Arad / Handel Architects’ National September 11 Memorial in New York, and Renzo Piano’s The Shard in London, we realized that Brit’s memory was being commemorated among the best design and construction that this world has to offer.

Be Like Brit – 2013 ENR Best Global Project Award – Residential / Hospitality

El Rodeo Suspension Bridge – 2013 ENR Best Global Project Award – Bridges / Tunnels

Schoolhouse South Africa – 2013 ENR Best Global Small Project

China Central Television Building – 2013 ENR Best Global Project Award – Office

National September 11 Memorial – 2013 ENR Merit Global Project Award – Cultural

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The Shard – 2013 ENR Best Global Large Project