Browsing by Author "Isaacs, Fadly"

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    Activating the back-quarters: strategies of acupuncture for the neglected open spaces of Delft South
    (2016) Arnold, Anees; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly; Louw, Mike
    With regard to low-income settlemnts in Cape Town, it has become apparent that the private relam is prioritised over the public realm. It is essential that we regard the public realm as an integral component of the lives of the people who inhabit this environment. Because of the living conditions, large portions of people's lives are conducted outside of this prioritised private realm. It is evident that public spaces within these environments become neglected due to a lack of ownership and management. The intention of this research is to find strategies of enhancing public life through encouraging shared open spaces – the urban commons. This thesis is process driven as opposed to product driven. The objective is to determine a replicable strategy that possesses generic solutions as well as providing strategies to address the specific. These strategies are explored and hypothetically tested using Delft South, Western Cape, as a site. With regard to the public spaces the present condition of the public spaces are not dissimilar to that in other areas of the same socioeconomic condition in South Africa. The public spaces have been neglected and there is limited space to provide additional public spaces within these areas. Therefore this dissertation explores the possibility of activating existing residual open spaces as well as neglected parks. It aims to use these as opportunities to provide shared public spaces nestled within neighbourhoods to meet the needs of the respective communities. Ultimately, the objective of this thesis is to develop a series of strategies which can be applied to specific conditions. This is to be to be done by interrogating my own design processes with the objective of being able to reorder it in a suitable manner. Specific to Delft South the areas positioned away from the active Main Road require attention. For the case of this thesis theses areas are referred to the backquarters and I have highlighted it as my interest of concern An introduction to my interest of adding new life to the public back quarters through enhancing the neglected open spaces. I will start off by problematising public spaces in low-income suburbs to outline the underlying issues specific to South Africa. This is followed by general principles that public spaces should embody. A large section, thereafter, will analyse the spatial structure of Delft South and how it is being inhabited. This analysis was done using various exercises to get both a quantitative and qualitative understanding. Using this as a basis, desired outcomes are explained in the chapter following this. All of these aspects are used to inform the architectural interventions.
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    Bridging the divide between primary health care and community
    (2016) Buys, Lüet Schraader; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    South African cities have a complex social and physical post-Apartheid layering. The historical legacy, referring here specifically to the inadequate roll-out of public facilities in areas and uprooting as well as separating of communities, have resulted in under serviced environments that can lack social cohesion and often struggle with poverty. Public institutions play a catalytic role within a community. To this end, health care portrays the government in a legible 'provider' role and is, in some ways, an obvious way to make citizens feel valued in comparison with other public institutions. Health care institutions impact the community in a unique way due to the combination of specificity of service and the emotive way it is experienced by the individual. This dissertation aims to research, define (and ultimately) test a strategy that aims to stitch together the fissure between community and institutions, by rethinking the urban interface of generic primary health care facilities. This research is structured around themes of theory, policy, the continuum of care and physical environments; each in order to better understand what and how the 'gap' between health care institution and community is constructed. Programmatic and/or spatial ideas that inform the architectural design. This dissertation asserts that providing 'traditional' generic institutions sustains rather than improves the life of the community. The research suggests that existing health care facilities can be more effective as public spaces by introducing new programmes, disaggregating the formal interface, redefining and activating a new urban threshold and providing meaningful open space. The design ultimately aims to act as a new skin or threshold through which institutions relate to the community.
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    Building Nurture: Care and Protection of the Growing through the Built Environment
    (2023) Dill, Alexandra; Louw, Michael; Isaacs, Fadly
    South Africa's tumultuous and oppressive past has given rise to a ubiquitous inequality in the country. This inequality has manifested itself in disparate access to essential needs including but not limited to adequate housing, education, sanitation, job opportunities and child care amongst others. Limited access to the aforementioned, on top of the exponential growth of South Africa's population, has left many in extremely undesirable living conditions and immense poverty. These ubiquitous issues have not gone unnoticed and there have been many attempts to better these conditions through a top-down approach – for example, provision of housing and affirmative action through employment opportunities. However, what these topdown approaches fail to tackle is the problems at their conception. The betterment of the country lies in the nurturing of its growing communities, especially its youth. Nurturance as an attempt to care and protect that which is growing both at the community and individual scale. This project aims to find a way in which to achieve nurturance through the built environment and tests ideas of integrative design that protects and cares for the growing impoverished population and the children that are born into it through physical intervention. It will be an attempt to lift people out of the cycle of poverty at its root through empowerment of both impoverished communities and the children born into them. This intervention will be designed and tested in the community of Vrygrond, one of the Western Cape's oldest informal settlements, which is a prime example of a continuously growing settlement with a very large young population. The site is located in the nucleus of the settlement as a symbolic embedding of a child-centred programme into the informal urban environment. This acknowledges the imperative need for child-centred spaces by weaving it into the pre-existing built fabric.
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    Delft Campus Of Schools - A Network Of Educational Offerings
    (2019) Meyer, Sean; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    With a personal interest in youth, it became my primary point of departure, which acknowledges the fact that youth development within local income areas is hindered due to the lack and inadequate resources and spaces. The focus on youth is imperative to address social transformation and release them from the grip of poverty. Following on from my Honour year investigations of the youth as active agents in the urban environment, this Masters dissertation looks at youth development through an educational lens.
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    Extending sites of education: patterns for adaptable shared facilities to upgrade existing schools
    (2015) Harrison, Juliet Anne; Silverman, Melinda; Low, Iain; Isaacs, Fadly
    Extending sites of education is an architectural design-research project that takes a typological approach to the upgrade of existing old-stock public schools in Cape Town. The focus is on parallel linear-block type schools built in neighbourhoods in the 1960s-80s. The defining decision was to extend existing schools, both spatially and programmatically, through a set of patterns that have relevance at multiple sites of similar condition. Rather than design a model, which may compound the problem of a-contextual school buildings, the project explores an architectural strategy that balances between the generic and the particular. Thus, although the design elements may be replicable, the architectural intervention helps to ground the school in its urban context. The new programme is intended to support and broaden the existing schools to enrich their role as places of learning and create opportunity for the campus to be shared with the community. Montagu's Gift Primary School in Grassy Park was selected as a case study to exemplify this approach.
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    Fertile ground: enhancing local food production in Delft, South Africa
    (2016) Pieters, Frans; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly; Louw, Mike
    This dissertation, situated in Delft, on the eastern edge of Cape Town, aims to improve livelihoods by establishing a productive urban agricultural operation that will create jobs, supply healthy food and reestablish farming as a lucrative business in an impoverished community. It is intended to inspire people to transform the landscape of local food production and sustainable agricultural practice. Most impoverished communities tend to feel the effects of a formal food system that is set up to deliver to more established urban areas. This forces low-income communities to rely on informal retail to supply healthy foods, often at a premium, both for user and supplier. Food supply chains are dispersed resulting in high food costs and over-reliance on an extensive transportation sector. My project aims to decrease this footprint allowing nutritious foods to be grown and sold locally, benefitting both the consumer and the producer. By investigating the leading NGOs promoting urban agriculture and food security in the Western Cape, I have been able to extract valuable spatial lessons from these organizations. I have then applied them to create a model of urban agriculture and local food production that can work in these demanding landscapes. I explored the natural and urban conditions at various scales to determine the number of inputs required for a successful operation. I also investigated selected technologies to enhance land productivity and food production as well as selected systems to establish a sustainable operation in a landscape where resources are valuable and scarce. With high unemployment a regular statistic in impoverished communities, there will always be labor available and when given the opportunity, local residents can take advantage of the many benefits that such a project can deliver. I hope to develop a model that can be implemented around communities all over South Africa and the world, where common challenges of food insecurity faced by millions of people everyday can be addressed through local food production and in the process, establish a new type of agricultural model that can supply both the formal and the informal food sectors. My project is about celebrating a new agricultural model, one that is integrated into the urban landscape with a particular focus on local production within an impoverished community. It consists of a production farm with educational, research and retail components and a large-scale greenhouse that is intended to change the landscape of Delft. The farm will run various agricultural operations in a sustainable manner where are resources and waste is recycled and reused allowing for a closed loop operation. Growing, processing, packaging and distributing of produce will take place from this centralized hub. The greenhouse will be the celebratory moment of my project and I envision it to transform the landscape of Delft and the way in which the farming is perceived from a local perspective. The building will showcase all kinds of food growing technologies and will become a landmark in the area as a place of education and production. Specialized crops and seeds will be cultivated, stored and displayed for visitors from around the world, a one of a kind building that fuses food production, education and public interaction.
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    Grounding Density: Mobilising the economic and spatial potential of low-income housing along the Delft South main road
    (2016) Brown, Kayla; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly; Louw, Mike
    This dissertation comprises five chapters. The first chapter explores issues of housing and density. Case studies are used to examine the relationship between agency and housing as well as the trade-offs of efficiency of circulation systems in dense housing. The second chapter locates the research within the context of Delft South and, more specifically, along the main road. The idea of "Home as Economic Generator" is explored through studying housing and retail patterns. The third chapter moves towards a design outcome by choosing and analysing Sibanye Square as a site within Delft. Chapter four explores a variety of technical considerations that could develop into an architectural language by studying how people are currently building in Delft. Finally, chapter five proposes an architectural outcome that explores three typologically different housing developments located on and around Sibanye Square.
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    The InforMALL: Shopping malls as infrastructures to support small-scale informal businesses
    (2018) Ferrandi, Simon James; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    My dissertation inquiry focuses on the informal economic sector within the emerging economic area of Delft. This was born out of a personal fascination with the concept of informal or 'alternative-formal' economics. The existence of this concept was first brought to my attention through the Spaces of Good Hope Design + Research Studio (SoGH) in my BAS (Hons) year of 2016. Through site visits to the Delft, I became increasingly aware of an economic environment characterized by complex socio-spatial relationships. These differ from multi-layered, highly-mechanized business operations associated with more formal enterprises. The more time I spent observing business practices within Delft, the more I became aware of the sophistication of the sheer magnitude of the social networks which were the lifeblood of the embedded informal economy there. Admittedly, I found the whole system slightly overwhelming, struggling to understand how such apparent chaos could hide such a sophisticated economy, so different in shape and practices from the formal economy. It was during a SoGH plenary given by property economist, Francois Viruly, on the topic of the informal housing sector within South Africa, that I discovered how significant the informal economy is in sustaining livelihoods for a substantial portion of the country's population who cannot find jobs within the formal sector. Speaking frankly, Viruly, a highly regarded expert within the field of property economics, stressed that in spite of the prevalence of the informal economy within the South African context, both as a viable source of employment and a significant contributor to our formal economy, there is a distinct lack of understanding of the nature of the interface between formal and informal. The reality is that the existence of either formal or informal is dependent on the presence of the other, and sometimes, as is exemplified in the relationships between spazas, shebeens, and the corporate giants Coca-Cola and SAB-Miller within emerging economic areas, the links between survivalist enterprises and big corporates are critical. Clearly, economics, urban design and architecture need to come closer together - they need to inform each other. The spatial aspects of the economy require much more attention. Viruly posed an important question: "Can we create a built environment that starts at survivalist level and is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a fast-moving economy?"
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    Over Growth: a metabolic densification of Cape Town
    (2016) Saczek, Ted; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly; Louw, Mike
    Contemporary cities are experiencing unprecedented growth to cater for growing populations and immigration into urban centres. As a result cities are becoming increasingly densified especially in developing countries2. Densification, and the associated growth, provides many social and cultural benefits, but can lead to increased pollution, environmental degradation, the destruction of existing urban fabric, a lack of greenery, a lack of light to street level, unmanageably large, decaying buildings and increased pressures on infrastructure. This dissertation argues that the design of densified spaces is of utmost importance if we are to maintain a healthy operating space for humanity and the planet. Since before the industrial revolution our society has become governed by a mechanistic way of thinking that originates from technology and science. These thought patterns have shaped the way we design and perceive architecture globally. Many other aspects of society are also influenced by the same mechanistic thought, including our global economic system. This system focuses on indefinite growth; a goal that our finite planet cannot sustain. This paradigm suggests that new, complex approaches to city growth need to be considered to avoid impending disasters. Over Growth investigates various biological concepts that can be applied to densification. Metabolism is used to understand how Cape Town can become more socially and ecologically sound. It suggests that to retain its local character and multi-cultural identity new buildings should grow over valuable, existing urban fabric. The cell is used to interrogate basic increments of city growth. These range from from the scale of an urban block, to individual ERF sizes and to the basic units of the proposed architecture. Symbiosis suggests that cities can exist in harmony with the natural environment. City growth, as an organic process, facilitates the necessary shift away from rational, dualistic thinking towards more complex solutions. These ideas are applied to the South African context, and in particular, a site on Bree Street. Many cities in the developing world continue to aspire to the western models of development. The development of Cape Town is thus threatened by the predominant mechanistic worldview. Conversations with Gawie Fagan, an architect and occupant of the chosen site, gave insight into the city's future and its past, explained later. In general this process was open, collaborative and interdisciplinary to be congruent with the push towards complexity over mechanistic thinking. In short, I develop an approach to architecture that could most suitably alleviate the negative affects of densification in central Cape Town. These include: the deconstruction of spatial hierarchies by using the idea of cellularity to create a more diverse, inclusive social realm; the adaptation, configuration and tectonic of cells; the provision of structure, services and greening to accommodate future additions in a layered 'over growth' that is simultaneously occupied and under construction; and the malleability of the city's zoning regulations and its densification strategy.
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    Re-drawing the thin blue line: Re-configuring the public interface of the Delft Police Station
    (2018) Le Roux, André; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    This dissertation has two departure points: the social phenomena of crime, particularly in Delft, and a concern with the character of institutional buildings, particularly in 'township' areas. These two departure points intersect in an interrogation of the police station as an architectural type, particularly the Delft Police Station. The police are often referred to as the 'thin blue line', suggesting an agency that delicately differentiates between the community and criminal activity. The apartheid era has left this line thickened and its effects are still felt in the buildings that it left behind, despite the shift from a police force to a police service, post-1994. This dissertation hopes to reconfigure this line in both; a physical way, through built form but also a social way, using mixture of programme. To produce a building that encourages interaction with the vibrant community, Delft.
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    Represencing place: the assembly of a vertical landscape from in-between space
    (2018) Collier, Mishkah; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    This project began with a personal attachment to place. An attachment to the Bo-Kaap as the embedded landscape of my spatial memory and cultural identity. My family holds a deep place attachment to the Bo-Kaap. It's the inscribed space of my forefathers and the only place that they've known as 'home'. Since the abolition of slavery in 1834, my family has come to reside in the Bo-Kaap, an uncovering that was discovered through my research at the beginning of the year. After the abolition of slavery, my grandfather's great grandfather purchased the property on the corner of Castle Street and Maxwell Lane, where his family lived for 3 generations until their home was expropriated under the Slums Area Act in 1934. His great-grandchildren later came to purchase available land towards the top of Longmarket Street, which was not affected by the Slums Area Act. This is where my family continues to live till this day. Having grown up in the Bo-kaap, I've witnessed its constant state of flux and the urban pressures that continue to disrupt its historical urban fabric and social character. This realisation has prompted my interest in the Bo-Kaap as both a physical and social space of past and present contestation.
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    The sacred and the everyday: exploring the relationship between religious space and public
    (2018) Chogle, Shafeea; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    This dissertation began with an interest in the relationship between religious space and the public realm, and a curiosity into the capacity of religious spaces to participate in and construct public. This interest, while conscious of global ideas surrounding the role of religion in the global south, is strongly rooted in the emerging urban conditions of the Delft settlement in Cape Town. Where historically the secular and the sacred have been separated along the same lines as the physical and spiritual, rational and irrational, modern and traditional, public and private (Gravelling, 2010: 198); this dissertation maintains to move beyond these separations and instead explore the overlaps, connections, and mediations, in a context where religious entities are actively taking hold of the spaces the secular has failed to fill. In this context, characterised by poor quality environments, high densities, and weak institutional presence, religious space has emerged into the public realm, thus becoming the intersection of public and private, of visible and invisible worlds. The project therefore departs from the position that religious space is a material asset capable of advancing social capital, facilitating networks, offering refuge, and providing a platform for the social and public life of a community.
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    Spatial Transitions: Cape Town Case Study
    (2013) Isaacs, Fadly
    The research is guided by the following question: What are the spatial dimensions of social justice when thinking about Cape Town as a post-apartheid city? In principle the research intends, by advancing a diachronic approach to the examination of spatial form, to critically analyse the spatial (physical) structure of the city at a range of scales and relate these to both the higher level normative /cultural imperatives as well as the associated functional organisational aspects that have been institutionalised at different moments in the history of Cape Town.
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    To reimagine the integration of public transport with high-density neighbourhoods
    (2016) Terwin, Stephanie; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly; Louw, Mike
    Transport is the network that moves people between places. It provides a means of access and opportunity. Transport routes in Cape Town have become expansive due to urban sprawl. There is an unjust spatial economy due to modern and apartheid planning. Poorer urban residents live far away from places of opportunity and are forced to travel long distances and spend a high percentage of their income on transport. Minibus taxis are the mode of transport best able to provide a flexible and on-demand service within this sprawling urban form. Public transport interchanges remain largely undeveloped and undesirable places. The concept of transit-oriented development (TOD) has the ability to transform these undesirable places into neighbourhoods of intensified mixed-use development, offering convenience, access and amenities to people who use the transport interchange or live nearby. The project involves the analysis of the transportation network in Delft, a rapidly transforming settlement 21 km from the inner city of Cape Town. Although the settlement is located far away from the historic city core, its main road follows an important desire line connecting Khayelitsha, a dense working-class neighbourhood and Belville, an important economic node. This has led to significant densification along Delft Main Road and people turning their homes into shops. Some 600 minibus taxis service the area because there is no high capacity train line or bus rapid transit (BRT) route. The project is sited within an important civic node in Delft and is well located to the R300, N2 and Symphony Way (regional roads). Taxis currently hover on the side of the street due to the people count in the area. The design is a public transport interchange and mixed-use - retail, residential and commercial - hub, which adopts transit-oriented development principles. The design proposal suggests an urban design framework that responds to the existing context, and a predicted idea of what the neighbourhood could become. lt aims to link the existing civic node to the new shopping mall development in a series of streets and active building edges. It responds to the life of the taxi by providing loading, holding, parking, servicing and washing areas. The taxi world evolves around the existing Caltex petrol station and Delft Main Road. The architecture responds to the current socio-economic context of Delft and how people currently inhabit space. The live-work unit provides flexibility for tenant and occupation mix, whilst contributing to the necessary density of the project. The dissertation explores how transportation can contribute to city building, economic activity and resi dential densification in an existing underserviced low-income suburb.
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    Urban Campus: Building the local craft tradition in Delft
    (2018) Van Niekerk, Warren; Silverman, Melinda; Isaacs, Fadly
    Delft is currently under construction. Evidence reveals that most residents have engaged in some form of building activity, be it small scale or large scale, self-initiated or by hired means. This labour-intensive condition gives rise to the notion of Delft as a site of production, resulting in an emerging local industry, which in return possess a number of opportunities both locally within Delft and outside of Delft. In this regard, the dissertation explores how these building-related craft traditions can be supported, through the design of a vocational training urban campus in Delft. Thus far, building work has been executed within Delft in an ad hoc manner, and good building work remains unappreciated. The dissertation attempts to construct an institutional campus informed by the local vernacular that aids in the creation of a positive public realm and contributes to the civic. The components of constructing the campus are explored through three typologies that make up the various conditions as a whole; building as an edge of exchange, building as a thoroughfare and building as a yard. The building system adopted is deliberately clear and didactic in its making, revealing materials, joints, details and structure. The process of assembly is intended to echo the existing vernacular, but at the same time introduce new techniques and technologies of making, serving both a pedagogic and a development purpose