OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Fellingham, Kevin"

Browsing by Author "Fellingham, Kevin"

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Open Access
At the edge: An exploration of the boundary condition between architecture and nature
(2016) Botha, Vivian May; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin; Crowder, Albertrum
An interest in abandoned and derelict landscapes as environmentally appropriate spaces for architectural interventions led my dissertation research to the theoretical concept of terrain vague. The terrain vague sites found within the City of Cape Town revealed that it is the edge condition which differentiates these spaces as being outside the realm of the normative city. The unravelling of the edge from a state of order to disorder took my research to the historical fortifications of Table Bay and specifically, the Settlement's eastern boundary demarcated by the French Lines. A combination of redoubts and connecting rampant walls which marked the boundary between the order of the European settlement and the wilderness beyond. The Central Redoubt is the only remnant of these structures and is located on Trafalgar Park in the suburb of Woodstock. Trafalgar Park is surrounded and fragmented by a variety of boundary conditions and controlled access which results in the Park being severely underutilised. The dissertation design project looks at re-activating Trafalgar Park through the manipulation of its various edge conditions. The transformation of boundaries into pedestrian routes and public space around points of interest aims to improve accessibility and encourage connections between the Park and surrounding context. The Swimming Pool Precinct was chosen as the site for the architectural intervention as it is an impacted site that offers the opportunity to increase activity and improve the connection between the north and south of the Park. The interrogation of the boundary condition between architecture and nature through the design of edges and thresholds is the driving concept behind the architectural design. The dissertation design project aims to demonstrate that appropriate architectural interventions are able to increase activity in public areas within the City of Cape Town without the need for fences and controlled access.
Open Access
Between nature and culture: a stone masonry school and walking path at the Strand Street Quarry
(2015) Rolando, Jean-Sebastian; Fraschini, Matteo; Silverman, Melinda; Fellingham, Kevin; Coetzer, Nic
The dissertation design seeks to make present and enhance the inherent qualities of the Stand Street Quarry in order to reintroduce its heritage narratives into the public realm. The proposed intervention aspires to, if anything, subtlety. It seeks to make the value of the histories of the site evident to the user in such a way that they are compelled to find meaning individually, to interact with the site and the landscape in a meaningful and personal manner. Minimalistic design solutions were sought out in order to produce a product scheme that embeds another layer of human intervention in the palimpsestual narrative of the Signal Hill territory.
Open Access
Blind Man's Bluff - cruel revelations through the study of architectural artefacts
(2019) Berlein, Darren; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
This dissertation is an attempt to understand the Bluff Headland of Durban by uncovering its hidden systems and ideas. By studying the abandoned built fabric visible on site including a whaling station, the ideas that once embedded themselves within those structures reveal much larger societal notions and hidden systems. The Bluff is of a particular interest in its relation to modernity as it is framed as a blind spot hidden in the development of Durban. Many of the artefacts found on site today are abandoned and owe themselves to particular epochs that have faded such as the abandoned World War 1 bunkers and the abandoned whaling station. However, Durban Central Sewage Treatment Works nestles itself in between these abandoned structures away from any engagement with the city anonymously pumping sewage into the ocean. This dissertation explores the horrors that once nested themselves in these structures through multiple modes of making, in particular the use of the camera and the body, as method of engaging with site artefacts cross-referenced with archival-research. The design project attaches itself to the ruined whaling station and manifests itself as a space of remembrance for the past systems that have once occurred. It also looks to the future of human impact on its environment by initially opening a counter memorial that allows the building to later mature into a museum through the passage of time. The natural action of the waves wash away the sand formwork that is used to cast the museum. Additionally visitors to the counter memorial are also invited to flense and wash some of the sand away to understand timescales of the natural world. These erosive processes will then allow the space to open to its full capacity, in time, taking direct influence from the process of whaling.
Open Access
Creating Connections in the City: From road to street; and buffer zone to landscape: Residual highway space as a tool in stitching segregated neighbourhoods into the urban fabric
(2015) de Beer, Christine Caryl; Fellingham, Kevin; Fraschini, Matteo; Silverman, Melinda
The fractured form of the post-apartheid South African city, created by city planning laws based on racial segregation, sustains inequality. Under apartheid, neighbourhoods were designed to exist in isolation. This isolation was created and reinforced by infrastructure and large areas of open space. This project recognises that residual space created by the highway could be an opportunity to stitch together the urban fabric. The project aims to address these spaces by using program to create connections. It finds its program in a sports centre on the border between Bonteheuwel and Langa. By understanding how our cities came to be fragmented globally, and its impact in South Africa, this project unpacks case studies that have created connections, extracting strategies that are useful and can be adapted in the South African context. It reviews literature that highlights new thinking about the city and the shift in the planning agenda from separation to integration. The project aims to address the separation between the two neighbourhoods of Bonteheuwel and Langa. It does this by transforming a road that divides, into a connective street; and by inhabiting the buffer zone with program in order to create an active landscape. The strategic choice of site is at an intersection of a new connection made into Langa, and presents the opportunity to address both these conditions of road and buffer zone. By creating an active street edge, the urban fabric becomes continuous between Bonteheuwel and Langa. The precinct has been designed so that the landscape offers the potential of connection by being programmed with urban agriculture, sports facilities and recreational space. These two predominant ideas prompted the conceptual understanding that the building becomes the transition between urban edge and landscape. A ramp is used as a mediating device to negotiate level changes both from inside to outside, as well as navigating the internal topography of the building. By recognising the opportunity of these residual spaces alongside the highway, these sites can be used to stitch together the isolated neighbourhoods in our city.
Open Access
Drawing The Void - Fabricating The Ruined Garden
(2018) van Dalen, Jana; Fellingham, Kevin; Coetzer, Nic
This dissertation questions the process through which subjectivity is transferred into spatial constructs and how singular and collective subjectivities are mediated and constructed through the processes involved in architectural production. It is proposed that architecture is the transfer of subjectivity into the landscape, through re-envisioning the ideological narrative found in “the Garden”, it considers how architecture can be made resiliently within the current state of socio-cultural entropy. Architecture is considered primarily an en-devour through abstraction, the project draws on the garden as an analogous narrative, constructing within its bounds the translations of cultural subjectivity into the landscape, a container of that which is valued and a measure of ideological shifts over time, in itself a stratified ruin, a marked tabula rasa, much like the city. The spatial questions and issues are constructed in parallax, a spatial dialogue between two gardens within the bounds of Cape Town, `the Company Gardens` and the “Void Garden” found in Salt River. The void garden is founded through the processes of parallax as the result of the establishment of the 'Company Garden’. An attempt is made to subvert the subjective fabric which held authority and reposition it in terms of its ideological `other`. The parallax narrative speculates the coming together of various parts in stereoscopic moments of tension, posing a space of question and interference relevant to the current mode of entropy. This entropic parallax space finds its programmatic counterpart in Achille Mbembe’s notion of the Pluriversity1, a space of epistemological and ontological questioning, discovery of alternative methods of knowledge cultural subjectivity production, which is manifested through the projection of diverse epistemic traditions. Following the configuration of parallax superimposition a reconstructed master plan emerged as one stereoscopic moment, providing a multiplied ideological framework of dissonance, to be filled and ruined, as knowledge is reassigned and re-imagined. The architecture embodies a new ideological understanding, a complex network of deepened and multiplied interactions. Envisioned as an armature within which a series of disaggregated programmatic fragments are arranged as a methodology for future architectural speculation to developed. Finally the project manifests as a garden of imminent ruin, as water impedes and the landscape disintegrates, the site is epistemologically disseminated, extending it beyond its bounds.
Open Access
Embodied relevance: exploring the potential of existing concrete frame structures: the case of the Christiaan Barnard Hospital
(2015) Zimmermann, Sophie; Fellingham, Kevin
Our cities to a great part consist of a large amount of already built fabric and this dissertation shall address this as an area of concern, encouraging the transformation of existing buildings, rather than building anew. Furthermore, the dissertation focuses on the universal issue of 1960's concrete frame buildings and investigates the potential for their continued re-use rather than demolition. This falls within the current discourse around the negative impact of the built environment and its contribution to climate change, and forms the backbone of the intended research. While progress has been made towards achieving urban sustainability in practical and conceptual terms, cities are still unsustainable. Buildings have a large negative impact on the environment in terms of the natural resources and energy that they consume, as well as the CO2 emitted throughout their lifespan. For environmental, architectural and economic reasons this dissertation investigates the applicability and process for the transformation and/or rehabilitation of existing buildings - to retain the existing embodied energy, while also focusing on adapting buildings to become more energy efficient. It is difficult to develop a fixed set of rules for retrofitting or rehabilitating existing buildings as they are all unique by definition. However, the general idea of retaining the embodied energy and actively engaging with the existing should be apparent throughout, encouraging environmental consciousness and bringing new life and purpose to the building. In the case of the Christiaan Barnard Hospital, this was done through retaining the bulk of the existing concrete frame (86%), while enhancing the internal quality of the building through the incorporation of light wells and various cuts and punctures throughout. While increasing occupancy wellbeing, this also allows for a comfortable interior climate through passive means and will improve the energy efficiency of the building, which is coupled with the energy savings from retaining the concrete frame. Additionally, a lightweight modular steel frame structure with movable mesh screens was incorporated into the building's façade to provide a fresh new look and allow for an interplay between the old and the new, while providing natural light, ventilation and shading. The functional changes in the building also allow for the reintegration of the building into the Cape Town CBD as a building that will now contribute to its surroundings. Thus, the design explores and strives to serve as a precedent for a methodology for sustainable building refurbishment.
Open Access
Engaging homelessness: Facilitating change through architectural intervention
(2018) Louw, Christopher; Fellingham, Kevin; Coetzer, Nic
This dissertation engages with the issue of homelessness in the City of Cape Town. It makes use of existing literature and research on homelessness to frame the severity of the issue. Furthermore, it surfaces the lived experience of homelessness through first-hand accounts of living on the street, highlighting the challenges faced and survival strategies implemented by homeless individuals. The response focuses in part to meet the immediate needs of homeless individuals by creating a safe zone in which the activities of the home can be carried out. Furthermore, the intent is to engage with the homeless population across a range of thresholds, allowing them the autonomy to filter into a newly facilitated network that works with existing infrastructure to guide individuals on a journey off the street. The Dissertation culminates in a speculative design project near the fringe of Cape Town's CBD. The project deals with an undeveloped parcel of land, as well as the addition to and alterations of an existing Salvation Army building.
Open Access
Finding the place of the artisan in developing Woodstock
(2015) Simos, Christos; Fraschini, Matteo; Silverman, Melinda; Fellingham, Kevin
Argument - The relationship between Cape Town and its socio-economic change has resulted in developments often disassociated with immediate context ,but rather following capitalist ideals with very little to no variation. This results in social alienation of existing communities with the new developments. These new developments are internalized enclave models with no engagement to their edge conditions but in the case of Woodstock, are selected solely for their proximity to the city center and their low start-up cost. These developments are also restricted to the measures of the urban scale and take a place in the morphology of the city by creating a new dialogue and place. However they do add value to the city and initiate a flurry of similar developments around them using the basic model of the enclave. In this dissertation I propose the existence of a hybrid model that lies between syntactic values learnt from enclaves of malls and the armatures of the main street/s. By engaging with examples like the biscuit mill and Woodstock exchange and looking into their syntactic structure in comparison to the structure of dedicated malls (such as canal walk), I will be able to construct a set of design characteristics from which I can propose a new spatial model. This together with a critical look at the two main roads (Victoria road and Albert road) that run through Woodstock there will be enough local research into the overall form of the two contrasting models. Question - Dealing with an existing urban fabric which has undergone many infrastructural changes over the past 40 years, the new model of the enclave takes on a new form in Woodstock yet is bound by the spatial parameters of the existing morphology. The question of how much how much can we change something without losing its original value whilst working within its limitations? Locating the design intervention - Based on the theoretical research into enclaves and armatures, I isolate "anchors" which facilitate the function of an enclave and act as the main attractors of people. Naturally spaces form around these "anchors" and a series of linear paths leading up to them. In the case of Woodstock I have chosen the Woodstock station, and its adjacent site. The main intervention is this site and its structures climaxing at the stations entrance. The initial diagrams are a series of models and sketches which explore the path/ sand structures supporting this movement. The programme itself builds off the tradition of artisans and craftsmen of the area which manufacture, market and sell in the same space. Tectonics are derived from the typology of the buildings found on site and are tailored related to the artisans who will use these spaces. The existing structure contributes to the overall expression and is explored as an adaptable spatial model. Conclusion - Describing a new model is context dependant and the theory serves as a guiding set of rules which are used to establish the argument. Breaking of these rules creates the new but must be critically analysed for is values or its shortcomings.
Open Access
Founding a farm: the marking out of Klein Stockwell, Western Cape, South Africa
(2018) Malherbe, Gideon François; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
This dissertation is rooted in my pursuit of developing a site engagement method that can be applied to learn from any given site by studying its history and inherent spatial logic. The research focuses primarily on a typological study of rural space and resulted in an architectural language that evolved from and amplifies the specific tradition of building as observed at Stockwell Farm in the Western Cape. The research process started with the temporal charting of the seen and the unseen forces affecting a portion of earth. Earth as seen in this work is a living organism that supports a historic community of interdependent individuals whom all leave marks upon its surface. Marking the earth is a daily practice in the rural agrarian space of Stockwell where historic and contemporary markings agglomerate to form a rural artefact that is the by-product of necessity. Within this resulting dissonance a space of unexpected sublimity arises. This dissertation critically approaches the establishment of a new farm on a portion of earth that has seen minimal marking. The portion is conversed with in a language learnt from its parent farm, Stockwell, and uses that as the basis for a vernacular of precast and expedient boer maak 'n plan building processes. The portion is moulded, marked and embellished to produce a space of multiple thresholds that arouse the sublime. I have designed a petrol station, truck stop, restaurant, organic farm, assorted barns, guest lodging, place of reflection, private sanctuaries and winery. Ultimately, a collection of buildings is brought to life and bound together by the moving of earth.
Open Access
The future of the past: inherent atmospheres
(2018) Hobbs, Michael Phillip; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
This dissertation is an attempt to extract architecture from the site itself. Michelangelo, the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer, famously said, Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. He clearly understood his role as the vessel by which an idea came to life in the physical world. In this light, the chosen site is treated much like a block of marble in the hands of a sculptor (the architect) and this dissertation is the documentation of the slow shaping, polishing, and final revealing of an idea. The design is conducted within the speculative future of the Breakwater in Cape Town Harbour. Two main interests are outlined: 1. Landscape: a desire to better understand architecture as the mediator between man and nature, essentially, and to view landscape as architecture and architecture as landscape through the dissolution of convention and the celebration of the imagination. Architectural space is treated as an extension of the site. 2. Rebirth: waste, as a by-product of contemporary consumer culture, is defined as something which no longer has value, something which is superfluous. The technological arm of this investigation is focused on the process of spatially re-imagining the breakwater site through the use de-constructed shipping vessels (machines which have become outdated and can no longer function in the post-industrial/information age). The main focus on landscape and rebirth filters through into the design of the Iziko Cape Town Maritime Museum to accurately represent the project's development from its theoretical founding to its speculative architectural resolution. Overall, this dissertation is focused on pushing the boundaries of spatial experience through the adaptation and re-imagining of a decommissioned ship. We know very well how to make good buildings which are comfortable and comply with council and environmental regulations. This endeavour is aimed at exploring new possibilities.
Open Access
Growing a building particularity as a strategy for upliftment of agriculture towns in South Africa
(2015) Malan, Catharina; Fellingham, Kevin
Motivation: Small agriculture towns in South Africa are suffering economically since the number of jobs available in the agriculture sector has been decreasing rapidly. This is attributed to a deepening in capital in the agriculture sector (Hall & Cousins, 2015). Consequently, unemployment is the reality of many farming towns and often results in large numbers of young people seeking a better life elsewhere, causing a slow but steady dilapidation of the town. The job seekers move to the city and become yet another burden on the city's already overloaded infrastructure since they have little chance of employment in a city environment with an agriculture skill set. Proposition: This dissertation proposes to contribute towards urban upliftment through healing the supporting parts to the urban whole. Based on the complex adaptive systems theory the whole can only function through the parts and thus as well as its parts. This frames the understanding that since agriculture is a major part of the Western Cape's economy, the city (the whole) can only be totally healed through healing the supporting agriculture towns (the parts). The intention is to provide a strategy, through research, mapping and design exploration that will uplift the image and economy of small agriculture towns in the Western Cape. Thus providing the town's people with pride and hope, the unemployed with jobs and the youth with a future. Approach: Looking at the two extremes of a centralized and localized approach to architecture, economics and general development, a sustainable mid-way of a locally focused, yet globally relevant, angle is strived towards. This approach suggests moving away from an abstract planning towards using the conditions on the ground and the town plan to provide the future plan through small shifts. A pragmatic approach of developing a theory and methodology through practice has been followed. The sample local town has been mapped and investigated in order to create a grocery list of the existing or available resources, conditions and needs. The content is carefully analyzed to determine the smallest move, with the available resources, that will have the greatest positive effect. The scheme relies on a particularity approach which identifies a local kit of parts. The kit of parts is used to create a spatial connectivity across the town and formulate an urban upliftment scheme. The proposed building serves as supporting infrastructure to the spatial network and culminate the urban, spatial, social and economic schemes. The building is also conceived from the kit of parts and serves as a built analogue for the values of the scheme. This proposed methodology/particularity strategy for upliftment of agriculture towns will be applied to and tested on Porterville (a small farming town about 200km North West of Cape Town) in the form of a speculative project.
Open Access
Lotus and the Machine: architecture for the symbiosis of cities and urban hydrology
(2015) Du Plessis, Claire; Fellingham, Kevin
Despite the abundance of fresh water produced in the mountains surrounding Cape Town, a range of factors contribute towards the imminent water crisis felt locally and internationally. While governing bodies have management strategies and infra structural upgrades planned, these interventions address issues of water quantity only. Steadily declining water quality is an equally important issue which will continue to impact on available fresh water quantities if action is not taken. The threats on water availability in cities stem from growing urbanization itself. The question this dissertation poses is how architecture can encourage a symbiotic relationship between built and natural environments, with special regard for urban water systems. The answer is found in the balance of quantity management, quality improvement and long-term protection of water - a symbiosis between city and urban hydrology. This dissertation documents the research and design of a speculative architectural proposition to embody such a symbiosis. It is hypothesized that the design must address quantity and quality issues simultaneously by coupling infrastructure with community facilities. This will ensure immediate remediation of a water system and encourage a long-lasting protection of water quality through passive education and public conscientizing. The research identiﬁes the Lotus River, located near the Philippi Horticultural Area in Cape Town, as an appropriate representative of the urban hydrological cycle in Cape Town. Through an understanding of the major pollutants in the river and a study of current technology, an industrial process which recycles pollution into fertilizer is proposed as the major programme of the project. This programme is overlaid with an agricultural training center and public amenities which encourage and incentivise environmental awareness among the community. The architectural theories of symbiosis and the social' condenser are proposed as precedent for the way in which architecture has, through the creation of transitional spaces, attempted to usher society into a new way of living. This project explores the creation of a transitional space between building and nature to encourage a symbiotic relationship between urbanity and water, where the Lotus meets the Machine.
Open Access
The missing middle : nascent potential in South Africa's commercial environment
(2015) Coetzee, Alexander; Fellingham, Kevin
My interest this year was around the commercial development potential of low-income areas in South Africa. The dissertation title, "The Missing Middle" refers to three aspects of the commercial environment in South Africa which I believe to be missing, ones relating to economics, architecture and built-environment professional practice. Economics: I was interested in the gap between two disparate economies in South Africa, those that in oversimplified terms are referred to as the formal and informal economies. Architecture: I was interested in the fact that this disparity was reflected in the types of retail buildings seen in South Africa - the fact that there are a large number of big-box type shopping centres and a large number of small-scale micro-enterprises but very few retail buildings that are at a scale between these two. Practice: I was interested in the gap in the market for the provision of built-environment professional services in low-income areas. These three aspects informed the design for a retail centre in the low-income suburb of Du Noon. The design project, entitled Waxberry Market, is aimed at filling the gap between small-scale informal trade and large-scale retail centres (shopping malls) in the context of South Africa's low-income suburbs. This report documents my dissertation in four parts. The first three relate to my initial enquiries around economics, architecture and practice with the last part covering the design project.
Open Access
Neurosis - Continuum [ Architecture As Urban Therapy ]
(2016) Scriba, Christian; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
This dissertation is rooted within the personal struggle to understand the absurdity of spaces which exist within Woodstock, Cape Town. The project draws a psychological connection between the site and its absurdities, implying that spatial absurdity is the effect of problems of the personified "sitemind". By visualizing what are called "neurosis spaces" the expressions of site-mind anxieties, and arranging them into a speculative site, the project creates a space of analogy. A space for which architecture becomes a therapy. Architecture in application thereby embodies therapy, forming an intervention which itself enacts the speculative analogy. The proposal is therefore seated firmly between the real and the imagined. A victim Offender Rehabilitation center mediates the analogy physically creating an architecture that plays on spatial experience and programming to create a place of therapy, a machine of sublimation.
Open Access
Path place pause: re-establishing vibrancy and cultural identity in Pniël by redefining the square
(2015) Mouton, Hayley; Fellingham, Kevin
Buildings provide a source of culture and cultural identity, forming part of the cultural fabric of an area with traces of the past assisting in the development of a place (Fransen, 2006). Cultural identity appears to be threatened in many mission towns in South Africa as issues of gentrification, urbanization and a loss of cultural values become apparent. As such, an architectural intervention is needed to provide a connection between people and place, in order to retain the cultural identity of a place. This dissertation explores how a spatial framework can re-establish lost space, specifically around the connection between path and place within a specific environment, namely Pniël. The investigation stems from the disconnection between people passing through Pniël and their interaction with the space. People travelling through this space never truly experience the spirit of the place while the path obstructs the people living within the place. Furthermore, the investigation aims to celebrate tradition, heritage and cultural richness within this area while understanding what is involved in generating a sustainable social and economic environment. Creating a cultural landscape supports the making of a vibrant space; where the landscape speaks of the areas typography and the people within the landscape create the social vibrancy that defines the cultural landscape (Vosloo, 2010: 41). Specific materials can be used to make people re-engage with the space. Architecture can reconcile the landscape and the place through the use of natural materials. Using clay provides a dialogue between the past and the present and can be used as a means to re-imagine space, assisting in the re-establishment of cultural vibrancy and economic development.
Open Access
Phantom narratives: architectural analogies of site specific memories
(2018) Mitchell, Wesley; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
The role of this report not only serves as an account of the work done in fulfilment of the Masters of Architecture (Professional) degree but also acts as a way for me to recognize and position myself within the physical context of the Cape Town. In addition to this, it offers me an opportunity through which I am able to formulate my theoretical position concerning what it might mean to practice architecture in the context of the city. If you were to lay the map of Cape Town out on a nondescript flat surface, you would be able to take a pen, and with one forceful movement draw a line that cuts from the summit of Devil's Peak to the crest of Signal Hill. If this line is to be taken as a literal cut in the surface of the surface, slicing open the Mother City then we can spread her wounds open to examine her shape, the layers of her complex story and build up. The now severed embrace of the Mother City is the setting for this year's Landscapes of the Cape Studio. A city flanked by sloping mounds of earth and rock on either side creates a section of a valley. By imposing the drawings of Patrick Geddes' Valley Section of Civilization1 onto the section of the City Bowl, a possible lens through which the development of the city can be understood is created by the relationship between the physical attributes of these two drawings. Through the inclusion of miners, hunters, woodsmen, shepherds and more, the development of civilization can be understood as a network of occupants who have their roots in the earth they walked on, each responding to the various specificities and complexities of the site, adding to the flow of growth and life. Through investigations into this new hybrid Valley Section, under the pretext of the shepherds, assigned to me as part of a group assignment, a site visit was conducted where we would adopt the persona of a shepherd in a contemporary context.
Open Access
Re-presenting layers of history in the "natural landscape": an architectural exposition of the Silvermine Reservoir
(2016) Jordi, Rupert Benjamin; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin; Crowder, Albertrum
The story of how a particular place came to be is more than the knowledge of a chronology of events; it is intimately part of our experience of that place. By knowing even a little of the history of a place, our perception of that place is transformed. In Historical Ground, John Dixon Hunt uses the term historical ground to refer to the notion that memories, tales, myths, and historical artefacts adhere to a place. The question Hunt then asks is how an existing site, and its tales, may be told through the medium of architecture, or landscape architecture. The idea that each site accumulates histories which may be revealed through architecture, is the basis for my own investigation. In the context of the Cape Peninsula mountain range, I am interested in seeking out and revealing particular historical narratives through the medium of architectural intervention. This report traces the journey of my design research project from my broader interests in the history of the mountain range; through the clarification of my architectural intentions; to my initial siting and programming strategies; and finally to my first ideas about making architecture in this context. I would describe this process as one of walking, finding, linking, and ultimately responding. This report introduces several key elements which underpin my research project. These elements (or layers) are: mountain (my general site of inquiry); pathways (how movement is linked to memory and meaning); earth (a technical study of the encounter between earth and architecture); fire (and its effects on the landscape); water (a resource with a story); and the wall (an historical piece of infrastructure). Each of these elements guides the reader through my research process and highlights certain found histories and artefacts along the way. As each element is presented, my research hones in on one particular place in the landscape, which is ultimately the site of my design investigation. This site, with the addition of a final artefact (a found brief), becomes the site of an architectural proposition which seeks to engage and link all of these elements together.
Open Access
Roots or routes: A case for vertical farming allotments in Dunoon quarry
(2018) Madyibi, Nwabisa; Coetzer, Nic; Fellingham, Kevin
This dissertation departs with an enduring interest in the social Milieu and the future projections of the fringes of South African major cities, specifically Cape Town, as urbanization broadens, transforms and makes the edge more complex. This document analyses this phenomenon in Dunoon Township and presents a case for vertical allotment farming in this context. The research, looks at this phenomenon as a narrative of land ownership in its most physical depictions, such as the story of the ownership of land to reap resources as the physical phenomenon of an abandoned quarry. This project acknowledges the danger and light treading around contentious environments, such as townships, which seem to create architecture that aggravates protest and vandalism, but chooses to counteract the pervasive 'headline-ing' of these areas by showing a township, Dunoon, as quotidian. This document does this by engaging with the life around the edge of the oldest quarry in the Durbanville Hills area - Once a source of great benefit and value to its immediate environment - now a fenced off cesspit for crime and superstition. An empathetic attitude towards considering material developed within the immediate environment to create value, as opposed to sourcing it from outside, is a founding precept for the design endeavour. The project can be described as a process which began by understanding the stagnant water within the basin of the quarry, what systems already exist to bring value to the urban fabric, and how the water can be best used in its mundane life. Beauty, viewed through the lens of this document, is something that brings undeniable usefulness to an area. That is the intervention of a wasted public space with rancid polluted water into clean usable water for a community suffering crippling rates of water shortage and cut-offs. It aims to put permaculture ideals into use by routing the stagnant water and making it into a system that consistently cleans itself over time. Routed water embeds a logic that becomes the catalyst for the fulfilment of a bio-inspired future -of which I emphatically advocate. This dissertation seeks to create an intervention which should encourage a new relationship with water in Dunoon. It is through a gathering of found program; farmers, NGO facilitators, walkers, joggers without tracks, children without playgrounds, women without laundry water tipping points, that the community is brought together in the water world of Dunoon quarry.
Open Access
Sculpting landscape: boulder and void on Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
(2018) Hall, Katherine; Fellingham, Kevin; Coetzer, Nic
This dissertation proposes that architecture is the conscious sculpting of an existing landscape, providing a lens through which a dweller becomes aware of their surrounds. The outcome of this investigation is a design project on Buitenkant Street, Cape Town. It is a mixed use building: a place to make pots from clay, a place to distil fynbos to fragrant oils, a place to live and a place to submerge your body in water and swim. The dissertation is made up of four parts. The first investigates architecture as sculpting landscape as the solution to the uninhabitable landscapes that become most cities. Part One then looks at the reasons behind our yearning for a sculpted landscape and thereafter, design parameters are defined by researching methods on how we should be sculpting landscapes and how others have achieved this sculpting. Part Two is an introduction to the Platteklip River, Cape Town's original water source and the site upon which the theoretical ideas defined in Part One becomes a physical manifestation of sculpted landscape. It does this in the form of a narrative, collecting the metaphorical and the physical in a pooling of memories and artefacts, forming the clay from which the sculptor works. The third part identifies opportunity for intervention within the physical: a literal weir located at what is currently a parking lot, number 63a Buitenkant Street, where the program collected becomes a part of the city. Part Four presents the manifestation of the theoretical as the physical: a building as a sculpted landscape. The matter becomes the vessel shaped by the void within: a museum of narratives that forms a part of an existing landscape.
Open Access
Social infrastructures: a shift to decentralized infrastructure as a means of rejuvenating blighted Lagosian contexts and places of similar genus
(2015) Windapo, Bayonle Olanrewaju; Fellingham, Kevin; Coetzer, Nicholas,Low, Iain
This research stems from reports of the interaction between the growing informal communities such as Makoko, the coastal plains of the degenerating Lagos contexts and their limited access to central infrastructure. The effects of climate change on the low-lying coastal plains further exacerbate the degeneration experienced in these contexts. Therefore this research examines how people live independently of central infrastructure in informal contexts such as Makoko and whether this autonomy can be embedded into interventions that are integrated within the socio-economic networks of these contexts in a bid to shift from defective central infrastructures to social infrastructures that transform the blighted Lagos contexts in a manner that builds resilience at a local level. By using Makoko as a site for exploration and communicating with the locals of the context, Lagos professionals and non-governmental organizations, it emerged that there is currently an unhealthy relationship between the state, its local governments and its informal communities such as Makoko, in that the city of Lagos is managed principally from the office of the governor. This central management results in infrastructures that are implemented without critical acknowledgement of the problems faced by individuals who live in the many informal contexts of Lagos thereby resulting in little or no observable transformation in its (Lagos) degenerating contexts. It was also observed that Makoko has a unique urbanity of soft infrastructures that lend themselves to different scales of functions in the context and diverge from the typical hard infrastructures employed by the Lagos state government. The observations and findings point to the fact that the relationship between the state and its people must be strengthened for delivered infrastructures to be of any consequence in realizing any positive social change and transform Lagos and settlements like Makoko from their states of human and environmental degeneration by acknowledging that these contexts have unique problems and urbanisms that must be fused into any interventions within their precincts in a sustainable, ecological and economical way. This move will go a long way in transforming and legitimizing Lagos's degenerating contexts as important facets of the city.