Browsing by Author "Klizner, Tarna"

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    Exploring gated eco-developments - contributing towards urban performance and sustainability: a case study of Chapman's Bay Estate, Noordhoek, Cape Town
    (2018) Von Geusau, Alexa; Klizner, Tarna
    South African cities maintain an apartheid legacy through their spatial layout, which is characterised by sprawl, fragmentation and separation. These characteristics have devastating implications for spatial justice, which cannot be isolated from urban performance and sustainability. Yet, the proliferation of gated developments and eco-estates is becoming an increasingly popular form of development both internationally and within South Africa. Often the sustainability debate allows for the glossing over of issues of social justice. These exclusive enclaves act as a microcosm for broader issues of social polarization and ecological fragmentation. This dissertation explores the complexities of this radical urban form and its implications for urban performance and sustainability. Through an understanding of the drivers and consequences of gating, it explores the conflict in which planners often find themselves: between the ideals of an integrated, accessible city and the contextual realities. This study of gated developments has been founded upon a theoretical debate as well as a case study analysis of Chapman's Bay Estate in Noordhoek, Cape Town, South Africa. This included a spatial and legislative analysis of the CoCT's Gated Development Policy as well as relevant spatial plans, through the lens of Chapman's Bay Estate. The research has revealed the perpetuating nature of gated developments in the urban realm. Furthermore, it has exposed gaps between the visions, goals and objectives of planning and the outcomes in practise. Additionally, it has revealed fragmentation between policies, plans and built environment professionals. Through this dissertation, I seek add to the current debate regarding gated developments and their implication on urban form. Furthermore, I address these findings through a review of the City of Cape Town's Gated Development Policy, as well as the harmonization and integration of relevant policies and plans.
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    How spatial planning can enable pathways to the implementation of sustainable urban drainage systems in the city bowl, Cape Town
    (2018) Harvey, Catherine; Klizner, Tarna
    The dramatic global trend of population growth has led to a rapid urbanisation, resulting in unprecedented land cover change. The incarnation of accompanying developed has typified impermeable surfaces. These surfaces have disconnected the stormwater component of the natural hydrological cycle, disregarding it as a nuisance and designing it to be rapidly removed from urban areas. Utilising Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) offers opportunities in urban areas to recycle the water and challenge the perception that stormwater is a nuisance and of no value. The current context of drought experienced by Cape Town has highlighted the need for less reliance on surface water resources; implementing SUDS could be a way of reconnecting the hydrological urban water cycle. It could also help to repair the human disconnect from nature that is prevalent in urban areas. The research question explored the role of spatial planning in enabling the implementation of SUDS in the City Bowl, Cape Town. While conceptual and technical frameworks have been developed for SUDS in South Africa, at present there is no spatial guide as to how these interventions could be realised in a specific context and area. This research utilise s the tools of spatial planning to re-imagine the City Bowl in relation to water. The case study methods used, enabling a detailed understanding of the site. This was complemented by interviews with various planning professionals in order to understand the current role spatial planning plays in terms of implementing SUDS. The research suggest is that whilst SUDS has many constraints, the opportunities that they provide for improving water quality and quantity, and surrounding amenities, suggests that this is one which has to be embraced if the City Bowl is going to respond innovatively and sustainably to the drought. It also highlights the need to improve coordination across different spheres and departments of governance, and emphasises the need to value local community knowledge. A prevalent silo approach to complex problems is no longer acceptable. The implications of the research are that implementing SUDS in the City Bowl requires planners to embrace a water literacy approach to spatial plans, and in doing so, return the focus to water
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    Landscape architecture and gender
    (2018) Smit, Fi; Klizner, Tarna
    This Dissertation Project is concerned with the meeting of Gender and Landscape Architectural theory, and aims to populate this (as yet) rare interface that requires urgent attention in discourse and practice. The Study is a research paper supporting the Dissertation Project by locating landscape architecture within the discourse on gender, and draws on Cultural Geography, Sociology, Intersectional, De-colonial and Feminist theory to argue that spatial design and the fields that engage with the production of public open space are key in understanding and addressing gender inequality. This is important because the gendered reproduction of space (and specifically, landscape) has tangible and pervasive effects on the access to, activity in, and safety of our public realm. Landscape positionality, the Nature/Culture dualism, Ecofeminism and Landscape theory are aligned in this Study, that engages with a topic that warrants a great deal of further research and development. The gendered experience, most often taking the form of various manifestations of rape culture, is particularly severe and restrictive in South Africa. Public open space is especially important to the struggle for equality and recognition across the hierarchies of privilege and power that stratify our society. Due to the unique intersections of violent constructions of masculinity, heteronormative and cisnormative socio-cultural codes, patriarchal social order, racial and racialised spatial and economic inequality and rape culture, women and gender minorities' movement, autonomy and potentials are severely limited. These spatial realities and socio-cultural inequalities are experienced every day, and they are gaining increased attention worldwide as social movements that include LGBTQI rights, the #MeToo Campaign, 16Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence bring the power and privilege of intersecting systems of oppression to light, where they can be understood, undermined, transformed and dismantled. Fear and the socio-cultural reproductions of the spatial exclusions that patriarchy imposes upon those it "others", is studied through the interviewing of participants about their perceptions of safety, access and activity in public open space. The Study also gives attention to the dearth of landscape architectural theory that recognises gender as a fundamental informant in the practice and theory of the landscape architectural profession. Feminist Landscape architectural theorists are few and far between, and the study argues that the last 50 years of development in the field has functioned in service of the dominant socio-cultural paradigms by knowingly or unknowingly excluding the extremely relevant advances in the fields mentioned above. By polarising the understandings of 'sustainability' and 'ecology' away from the deeply interrelated realms of sociology, philosophy, cultural geography and anthropology, the construction of Landscape architecture as a profession loses its ideological soul - humans. Whether we like it or not, we are architects and designers of spatial realities - both tangible and intangible, as landscape is not just physical elements, but also 'paysage'. As architects we design with nature for the sake and benefit of the whole. And that whole includes homo sapiens - our processes are natural processes, our artefacts are no less valid in Nature than the weathering of a mountain into stones and sand. The distinct forms and the experiences curated within landscape architectural artefacts evoke not only emotional response, but have the ability to transcribe attitudes. What then, is gender-conscious landscape architecture? The Enquiry phase answers this question by using Cristophe Girot's Trace Concepts (Landing, Grounding, Finding) to engage with a process. The literature shows that feminist architecture and landscape architecture is not a style, but a kind of activity - deeply dependent on the agenda that the designer must be constantly aware of - dependent on positionality. There are rather "…feminist ways of looking at and making architecture, but these are based on a certain approach, not a 'recipe'. This approach stems initially from an understanding that our surroundings are not neutral, that there is a relationship between the content of architecture and our … social structure. The Enquiry phase recognizes this way of knowing as a complex and reflexive condition that includes consideration of a multitude of factors, to approach a design with a gender-sensitive lens is to include a much wider range of considerations than gender alone. Attention to the cultural reproduction of space by virtue of a sensitivity to proxemics, by embracing subjectivity as a design strategy, by embarking on site analysis that involves much more that one view or the layering activity from one vantage point (thereby avoiding the danger of a single story) characterises the enquiry phase, that was continuously informed by the theoretical underpinnings of the Study which was written simultaneously. Enquiry involves the grounding of the design process in a site, and the Tafelberg road is chosen for its positionality and unique patterns of use. This site is visited periodically, documented, experienced, consulted and slowly revealed to be a landscape physically and ideologically continuous with its various contexts - geomorphic, historic, ecological, hydrological etc.. The Founding phase has no discernable beginning point, as it includes the spatialisation of the conceptual development in both written/drawn and idea/ imagery form. It involves spatial investigations in model-making, revisiting the site to test ideas, spatial imaginings and experiential design that is guided by concepts such as Contextualising, Sequencing, Conceal and Reveal, Pause and Program and Opening.
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    Landscape ruin: groundmass excavation at Higgovale Quarry
    (2018) Thomas, Sarah; Klizner, Tarna
    My study consists of an inquiry into archaeology and palaeontology, and the relationship of 'the dig' to landscape. I focus on the idea that digging or excavating is a process that can reveal ancient landscapes and suggest new narratives. My research revolves around ruin discourse, and the idea that a 'dig' is a sort of ruin in reverse. I began thinking about the criteria that define a ruin and applying them to landscapes. The study culminated in the idea of the landscape being a kind of ruin itself; the experience of a ruin, or ruinenlust, isn't only about a structure that has been dragged down into the ground over time- it's also about light, temperature, plants, views - all the elements that make up our experience of landscape. I set about trying to turn this study into a project - how do I design the idea that all landscapes are ruins? The ideas I had explored of excavation, and especially the image of the 'grid' of excavation as an imposition over the landscape, led me to the Higgovale Quarry site.
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    Prison City: redesigning Pollsmoor Prison
    (2018) Pullukattu, Liz; Gibbs, David; Raxworthy, Julian; Klizner, Tarna; Hindes, Clinton
    Rehabilitating the Prison System: The prison system in South Africa is a harsh and ineffective system that emphasises the need to punish rather than rehabilitate and reintegrate the incarcerated back into society. Although a lot of prisons in South Africa host a number of workshops and activities which have been introduced to inmates for such purposes- the recidivism rates of offenders, that have ended up in the penal system, has failed to drop or decline. A Process of deconstruction and synthesis: The method of this study is to analyse and deconstruct existing prison or correctional/ penitentiary/ rehabilitation institute landscapes into potential design components and then synthesise these into environments that can promote the rehabilitation of prisoners. The projects analysed are of international and South African origin, and are of prisons or mental and other high-security institutions. The analysed projects will be looked at as potential interventions that can be synthesised within the landscapes (rather, lack of landscapes) of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Looking into redesigning Pollsmoor Prisona prison where conditions do not support opportunities for rehabilitation and integration and where bland, cold concrete and brick facades enclose inmates for mostly 23-hours a day.
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    Re-thinking the possibility of the urban roof space
    (2011) Lu, Ke; Klizner, Tarna
    Within an. urban context, if multiple level thinking associated with landscape architectural design principles are applied to roof spaces, these can be activated for specific purposes. The space on top of roofs has the potential to be converted into areas for production, recreation , socializing and even for healing. Today, in the urban context it is difficult to find spare spaces that can be actively used by people; most public squares focus on improving the micro-economy, leaving almost no space for recreation. Also, within the urban context many buildings are designed in an "unfriendly manner" creating dark and damp spaces on ground level where people are not willing to stay. These kinds of dark, damp and "un-friendly" environments are not beneficial to people. Because people are looking for recreational spaces in an urban environment, the recreational, multi-purpose use of roof spaces is becoming necessary. There are many examples within the urban context of people trying to use roof space for the growing of vegetables, or creating gardens for biodiversity purposes. Currently many green roofs only focus on increasing the ecological value of the space, a seemingly simple function , causing many people to lose interest in the concept. Landscape architects should not only work on ground level but on multiple levels within the urban environment. James Corner who designed the "High Line Project" worked on an abandoned bridge, activating the dead space and thus allowing the space to be used for human activity and at the same time improving the urban ecology. Urban hospitals require a comfortable environment for their patients, who can benefit from the right kind of healing environment. Roof spaces have the potential to be used for this purpose. When designing a roof space, landscape architects should not only focus on the ecological and cultural aspects, but also focus on space making for a specific group of people (patients). Creative ways of re thinking the healing landscape environment and bringing healing landscape principles and ideas while applying them to a completely artificial environment is the challenge.