
September 2012 saw the three proud winners of each local Zero Award 2012 Green Architecture competition (icecairo, iceaddis & icebauhaus) come together in the capital of Egypt for an intense week of green innovation collaboration.

The five day workshop started with getting to know each other through exciting discussions about local and global challenges to green architecture and urban development, seen through the very different perspectives of
The Zero Award 2012 | Green Architecture local competitions have been successfully completed. We congratulate our nine winners from three countries, in three sub-categories each, who now continue on to the next Zero Award phase: Starting up international green architecture collaboration in a week long workshop in Cairo!
Learn about the winning entries:


Monday June 18th, 2012, 7:00 pm
in "Oberlichtsaal" Bauhaus University Weimar

Monday, June 11th, 5:30 pm in Italian Culture Institute, Addis Ababa!

The zero award logotype has the word "zero" written in the three languages English, Arabic & Amharic. The award carries this name because, as a very useful innovation to mankind, the concept of zero as a number is said to have been introduced to the western world from the arabic. Zero is also a symbol of "green" targets in technology innovation, such as "zero emission". The logarithmic spiral is an attempt at visually depicting this universal concept.
Zero award originated 2011 as an Egyptian innovation competition and is now, 2012, organized in the three countries Egypt, Ethiopia and Germany as an icehubs event. The logo has been modified to represent this expansion into new cultural and language domains.
Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia is the world's second most-spoken semitic language next to Arabic.

The Zero Award trophy was designed to visually and physically represent the ideals of green innovation. The Egyptian version is made from Egyptian palm midrib which is available in abundance locally, as opposed to wood from trees which are scarce in Egypt and need to be imported. The metal upward-spiral symbolizes the "zero" concept of the zero award (approaching zero at the center), as well as the dynamically growing waves of change that a simple innovative idea can effectuate onto its environment. For this years' edition, variants of the trophy are also currently being designed in Ethiopia and Germany, expanding the original concept from Egypt to the local contexts of the other hubs in the international ice network. Stay tuned ...
Yesterday, the official launch of the third local zero award 2012 competition took place in the main building of Bauhaus University Weimar. Physically present at the event was Markos Lemma community manager from iceaddis and virtually via video, iceaddis director Oliver Petzoldt. Info in German on the Bauhaus University Website. Zero award is as of now officially open for submissions in the three countries Ethiopia, Egypt and Germany!
