State Secretary for Culture and Media, Gunay Uslu, presented the Heritage Sustainability Awards 2023 on September 28 during the Sustainable Heritage Week conference. The recently renovated  Tuighuis in Den Bosch won the title in the business category. The monumental home of former councilor Huub van Oorschot in Culemborg won the sustainability prize in the private category.

Both projects were ahead of the other nominated projects in the voting reserved for the more than 400 participants of the Sustainable Heritage Week. The other nominees in the business category were ‘De Klasse’, a former company building in Leeuwarden and a house from 1666 preserved by the Hendrik de Keyser association.

The Heritage Sustainability Prize is an initiative of the National Cultural Heritage Agency, the National Restoration Fund and the Netherlands Monument Land Foundation. This year there were a total of 43 entries. In addition to the professional jury, the public could also give their opinion. From August 14 to September 24, the public could give one or more projects a ‘like’. The Uncle Louis Store building from 1951 in Aruba, restored in 2019, collected the most ‘likes’ and thus became the winner of the audience award.

The Heritage Sustainability Prize was established in 2022 when ‘Sustainability’ was the theme of Open Monument Day. Because making monuments more sustainable is really different and more complex than making newer homes more sustainable and to inspire monument owners and show what is possible, the Heritage Sustainability Award has been organized again in 2023.