Browsing by Author "Low, Iain"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Community participation in the architectural design : a South African perspective with focus on Langa Township, Cape Town
    (2005) Ullmann, Christoph; Low, Iain
    The intention of this thesis is to analyse community participation by the example of one particular firm in Cape Town, South Africa. The thesis investigates in a time period between 1989 and 2000. That means that the study considers the planning conventions in "black" Langa Township before, during and afer apartheid. The study accepts the philosophy of one particular author, Henry Sanhoff who is internationally acknowledged for expertise in community participation. His theory is based mainly on the social and economical environment of developed countries and holds therefore the potential to transfer knowledge into the nature of community participation as it is understood in South Africa by one particular firm, SC-Studio architects.
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    DesignWork : a study of public works programmes in South African architectural projects
    (2016) Splaingard, Daniel; Low, Iain
    Increasingly in South Africa, architects are requested to design buildings that meet the job-creation and training goals of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), a government-led poverty relief initiative. In so doing, they have a mandate both to design buildings and to design work for the poorest of the poor. This unique context of architectural practice is herein termed DesignWork, and the links between these designs and their measurable work outcomes will be the focus of this Case Study Research. Architects can be key agents in shaping economic empowerment for participants and architectural quality within these projects. This thesis investigated how architects addressed three key goals of increasing wage transfer through labour-intensive construction, enabling skill development through relevant in-situ technical training, and creating quality assets. With the 2030 National Development Plan anticipating the growth of the EPWP in the coming decades, the development of effective architectural strategies within this context is of great significance. Evidence from semi-structured interviews, site visits, archival documents, direct observation, and data collection were used to interrogate the architectural design strategies and work outcomes within two select projects. What emerges is a focused view of the central challenges of achieving the EPWP programme goals, baseline data for future research, and an understanding of the foreseeable challenges for architects designing in this context.
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    Examining a boundary : spatial manifestations of social practice along the Buitengracht, Cape Town, 1652 - 2005
    (2006) Tomer, Sharóne; Low, Iain
    Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72).
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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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    The influences on the two inner city housing projects of the Bo Kaap and District Six in Cape Town that were built between 1938 and 1944
    (2004) Van Graan, André; Low, Iain
    This study examines the social, political, and architectural influences that shaped the two Cape Town inner city housing projects in the Bo Kaap and District Six that were built after the introduciton of the Slums Act of 1943, between 1938 and 1944. During this period there there were changes in the hegemonic perceptions of the city. The eradication of slums served as a catalyst for spatial change and the dislocation of lived space as the city sought to re-create itself as a modern, rationally planned metropolis. The civic authorities and architects appeared to use the criteria of the modernist discourse as a mechanism to wield social control on marginalised members of society; creating mechanisms of removal, exclusion, surveillance and control based on ethnicity. This reflects the perceptions of the French philosopher, Foucault regarding power and control.
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    Negotiating modernism in Cape Town: 1918-1948 : an investigation into the introduction, contestation, negotiation and adaptation of modernism in the architecture of Cape Town
    (2011) Van Graan, André; Low, Iain
    In the early twentieth century modernism radically changed the world, affecting all aspects of life. Twentieth century modernism incorporated new inventions that changed the modes of travel, it restructured methods of production and the way in which people lived, worked and played. This radical change was to be reflected in all sectors, and was particularly manifested physically in architecture. Modernism demanded a radical shift from an architecture that had been slowly evolving from nineteenth century eclecticism, overlaid with reactionary concerns for the overwhelming impact of industrialisation on society and on the built fabric of cities. It sought to identify new ways of dealing with these issues and finding new methods of spatial production and ultimately creating a new means of architectural aesthetic expression that came to be referred to as the Modern Movement. The response to the radical change implied in modernism resulted in a process of negation and contestation, leading through negotiation to a mediated compromise before an ultimate acceptance.
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    Re-presenting Cape Town through landscapes of social identity and exclusion : an interpretation of three power shifts and their modifications from 1652-1994
    (2008) Graaff, Linda; Low, Iain
    Colonial practice informed the development of the built environment in Cape Town and resulted in the production of a landscape that represented the hegemony of colonial power. Where the over-arching concern is the relationship of power and space, the process followed locates the inquiry in issues of social identity and exclusion as representations of power relations. If it is assumed that space is a function of social values and practices that are related to power, it follows that when power changes the built landscape should also change. This is an enquiry that tests this assumption. Cape Town is a port situated in southern Africa, and was initially developed as a colonial settlement in the seventeenth century when the Dutch assumed power over the Cape; thus constituting the first power shift located in this argument. The undeveloped wilderness was changed from a condition of 'origins' to a town representing Dutch power and social practice. The second power shift occurred when the British took over the colonised territory in 1806. While Dutch spatial practice was concerned with defending itself in an unknown territory, the British embarked on a process of expansion into the interior that was dominated by practices of segregation. Union government in 1910 marked the third shift and the beginning of a neo-colonial era where spatial practice remained largely aligned with a modernist European paradigm that produced alienating landscapes. The post-structuralist theories of Lefebvre and Foucault are interpreted to illustrate the 'representation of space' and 'power' in this context. The different spatial sets characteristic of each period, are presented as a construct that is developed to inform the method. The power shifts and modifications that constituted power changes through time are interpreted through a process of narrative and mapping. The accumulation of spatial practice through time produces a hybrid landscape where spatial practice in the context of the post-colonial condition represents cultural difference.
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    The search for hybrid tectonics in contemporary African architecture: encounters between the global and the local
    (2021) Louw, Michael Paul; Low, Iain
    This thesis is based on the proposition that there is an emerging phenomenon of tectonic hybridisation in contemporary architecture in Africa where global and local ways of making are being combined. A growing awareness of this tendency was informed by an extended period of practicing, teaching, and re - searching architectural technology in Africa. I embarked on a directed search for examples that demonstrate this, but I soon realised that they are shaped by ongoing tectonic transitions that highlight the encounters between techno and technē, between the global and the local, and between the global North and the global South. These binaries can and should be contested, and this study seeks to understand the underpinnings and tectonic strategies of buildings that demonstrate evidence of this contestation. The phenomenon of tectonic hybridisation was interrogated as a case study using mixed methods consisting of literature reviews, the identification, investigation and cataloguing of works, and the analysis of key projects through primary sources and visual research methods. The literature review explored different positions related to technē, technology and tectonics, and consid - ered theories that range from Bhabha's reading of hybridisation to Frampton, Lefaivre and Tzonis' development of Critical Regionalism. In parallel, a cata - logue of buildings that exhibit a tendency towards hybridisation was produced and developed into an open access website. Subsequent analysis of this un - covered common strategies across projects which could be located within the spectrum of global and local tectonics. Further examination revealed buildings that share similar tectonic strategies, which often coalesce into constellations, and key projects within these were identified for more detailed investigation. Data was gathered through personal interviews with the architects, site visits, seminars, additional literature review, and in some instances, through co-pro - duction. The data was then analysed further through cross-comparison in the form of tables, discursive textual comparison, and visual research methods. As a result of these investigations, a significant number of works that signal a shift towards hybridisation are revealed. Further analysis clarifies their tectonic strategies, their ethical underpinnings, and how they relate to this transitional shift. A set of criteria is proposed as a measure for recognising, studying, and evaluating contemporary architecture in Africa. The prospect of this work is to extend the field into the further investigation of hybrid tectonics.
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    Urban re-vision: Philippi market space
    (2010) Motene, Katlego; Steenkamp, Alta; Noero, Jo; Carter, Francis; Low, Iain
    This thesis investigates a link between food security and rural to urban migration in the city of Cape Town. Philippi as a Gateway to the City of Cape Town for many people migrating from rural South Africa, especially people from the Eastern Cape is therefore a natural site for the investigation. The point of departure is that the city is defined in relation to the landscape [agriculture being the generator of this landscape]. My observations are that when migrants come from rural settlement, where land is a primary source of food, through farming at household/community/commercial level, they abandon the embodied knowledge of how to produce a livelihood from the land as this knowledge is perceived to be of little value in the city. The aim of this thesis is to propose an architecture that allows the spatial practice of the migrant, as it relates to food production, to become visible as a function of the city.
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    What's in the pocket? : a critical history of land inscriptions in the Bishoplea area of upper Claremont during the British rule at the Cape (1806-1910)
    (2004) Titlestad, Sally Margaret; Low, Iain
    Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-66).