Browsing by Subject "architecture"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    The 3 faces of Mali
    (2012) Wain, Anthony
    A story of Mali in three (short) parts, its people and special places. This lecture was delivered by landscape architect Anthony Wain for the Friends of the South African Museum. This lecture will be of interest to landscape architects, social anthropologists and others interested in the social and natural history and present life of Mali.
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    Analysis of the military hospital, Port Louis, Mauritius
    (2023) Makins, Tessa; Roux, Naomi
    Through a case study of the Military Hospital Complex in Port Louis, Mauritius, the influence of the World Heritage Program of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisiation (UNESCO), in Mauritius is analysed. The new Intercontinental Slavery Museum, a destination on the UNESCO Slave Route, is housed in the Military Hospital Complex. The museum's stated intention is to narrate the shared history of all Mauritians, regardless of their provenance. It aims to explain the role played by the island as a pivotal connection point in the Indian Ocean slave trade from the 18th Century. The Military Hospital Complex is the oldest surviving building on the island (completed 1740). It was built by the French colonists, Mauritius' first permanent inhabitants. The building has a multi-layered history as it has been integral to life on the island, through changing administrations for more than 280 years. The role of the building has adapted over its life span, reflecting the changing political and social dynamics of the country. Responding to the forces of globalisation in the 1990s the Government of Mauritius engaged with the UNESCO World Heritage Program. The focus of this analysis is on how this Government engagement with UNESCO has affected the creation of modern heritage resources within the country through this case study of the Military Hospital Complex as the Intercontinental Slavery Museum. Methods employed have been to obtain a biographical understanding of the building through archival research, site visits and relevant literature. The historical, political, social, and legislative context of the building over its life, and relating to its transformation into a modern heritage resource have been investigated through relevant literature. Theoretical frameworks of heritage construction in multi-cultural societies have been employed in guiding this research. The UNESCO World Heritage Conventions are discussed, in addition to the various UNESCO treaties, declarations and programs that cumulatively influenced the realisation of Mauritius' World Heritage Sites. The social processes within the country that led to the Truth and Justice Commission in 2010 are investigated. One of the principal recommendations of the Truth and Justice Commission of Mauritius was the creation of a new Intercontinental Slavery Museum in Port Louis. The political ramifications of Mauritius' two World Heritage Sites within the local and global contexts are discussed. The Mauritian political construct that defines the population into groups based on the places of origin of their forebears is at the heart of the way modern heritage has been constructed in the country in association with UNESCO to date. Heritage remains contested and highly politicised in the country. This study has been limited by the politically sensitive nature of heritage within the country and interviews were difficult to secure. The difficulties encountered in conducting research for this analysis has affirmed that these sensitivities prevail. Almost without exception, government officials, heritage professionals and academics were reluctant to discuss the heritage program of the country on or off the record. The researcher was denied access to the case study building. This research concludes that although the vison of Mauritius' new Intercontinental Slavery Museum (housed in the Military Hospital Complex), is comprehensive and inclusive, the political construct of the country remains an impediment to the narration of Mauritian heritage. The heritages of the different groups of people who collectively comprise the Mauritian population have, to date, been separately told. The new museum has a role to pay in narrating the role played by Mauritius within the Indian Ocean slave trade, a story that has relevance to all Mauritians regardless of their population group.
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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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    Building resilience: a pancultural practice exploring cultures, memory & amp; modernism through hybrid and liminal condition
    (2022) Pournejati, Omid; Papanicolaou, Stella
    This dissertation draws on the experience of the third culture kid to set up a design approach for adaptive reuse. The third culture kid is someone who has lived outside of their culture/ country of origin for majority of the developing years and as a result experiences the sense of belonging or not belonging to multiple cultures to form personal identity. The Old Castle Brewery complex in Woodstock, Cape Town offers a viable site for this exploration which involves theories of isolation and integration, hybridity, and the rhizome. A connection is made between the author's Iranian Islamic culture of origin and the site through qualities of brickwork, light and courtyards.
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    [Co]Building for A displaced community: the conduction of place-making strategies as a means of addressing spatial segregation
    (2023) Davids, Ismaeel; Le Grange, Simone
    The provision of adequately -designed housing alone will not eradicate poverty, and on its own, will not completely change the quality of life of people living in the Cape Flats area. The dissemination of houses has marginalized its recipients and disrupted communities through prescriptive and homogenous development that was brought about through Apartheid spatial planning. The appalling planning of housing typologies and poorly defined residual spaces that make up most of the Cape Flats have resulted in a series of neighbourhoods that sorely lack a sense of place. This dissertation examines the topics of: resilience, claiming the right to space, amenities and place-making in the face of adversity within Hanover Park. My aim is to draw inspiration from the existing infill spaces that subsequently manifests into a speculative design proposal to harness ideas of polyvalency and heterogeneity which will aid in alleviating the cycle of poverty. How can Hanover Park's poorly defined residual spaces within the existing stagnant built form be improved to enable communities to participate in the process of place -making? Further, how can a reimagination and adaption to existing fabric be modified to allow for sensitive and careful expansion in support of creating well-defined public and private spaces? The conclusions drawn from this line of enquiry should lend itself to a clearer understanding of the opportunity that lies within Hanover Park's unheld residual spaces to house the diverse pool of micro-enterprises and activities that transpire in the community. Further, it heroes a system of community-embodied spatial design as an act of resistance to histories of forced removals and displacement.
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    The development of a design for a school hall
    (2012) UCT Knowledge Co-op
    This project looked at the development of a design for a hall at a primary school. 9 Students used the Sim office project of their Architecture course to work with the Extra-Mural Education Project (EMEP), and the Kannemeyer Primary School in Grassy Park. The object was to develop designs for a school hall, including changes to existing buildings. Nine students from the Architecture Department at UCT worked on the designs.
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    Passive building design - Student example 2 (Louise Malan)
    (2013) Sanya, Tom
    A detailed and illustrated site analysis covering Solar analysis, Shadow analysis, Ventilation, Rainwater and Daylight studies, culminating in a set of completed three-dimensional architectural drawings. An example of passive design strategy, outlining all the steps required when completing a detailed site analysis. this resource is part of the passive building desing series.
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    Passive Building Design - student example 3 (Laura Graham)
    (2014-08-18) Sanya, Tom; Graham, Laura
    This resource is an interactive website showcasing passive design methodology, completed as part of third year coursework for a Bachelor of Architecture degree. The website includes pages on stairwell lighting and ventilation, thermal comfort, and green roof design, situated in an urban design context. Highlighted in this resource is the concept of constructivism and passive design methodology.
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    Pearl River Tower - Sustainable Design
    (2014-08-18) Sanya, Tom; Tsankov, Lazar
    Constructivism: Lecturer guidance, student teamwork and creative engagement with information sources to formulate a logical whole. Pearl River Tower pushes the boundaries of sustainable design. Information on the tower is organised on a wiki in easily navigable categories with lots of clear explanatory diagrams. From the site, there are also links to external web resources on the building such as youtube, the architect's office etc For anyone interesting in sustainable design for highrise building, this resource is worth a vist.
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    Seeking sanctum, a space for healing
    (2023) Argue, Deva; Steenkamp, Alta
    Bearing witness to domestic violence and the crippling nature of trauma drives the interest in designing healing spaces for women and children. A person of inspiration and countless similar stories have resulted in the dissertation topic of a sanctuary, for women and children, as a space of healing and protection. The proposal is informed by research into feminist perspectives on space-making, phenomenology as a design tool to bring meaning to spaces, and responsive architecture as a way of deeply understanding and responding to site, context, and the community in an impactful and connected way. Two key issues are highlighted from the research and experiences of others, firstly that of needing to provide a space that feels homely and safe, not sterile and clinical, and secondly, that of providing access to facilitated healing and empowerment: with access to support, skills training, workspaces, connections, and nature. The resulting proposal is situated in Hout Bay, adjacent to a wetland, offering accessibility, access to nature, as well as an inherent sense of sanctuary. The design explores the juxtaposition between protection and openness by layering spaces to offer varying degrees of privacy, also using materials to explore solidity and transparency, heaviness, and lightness. Protective thresholds frame and enclose spaces, giving way to openness. Grounded programme is contrasted by the lifting of the most private spaces. More broadly the juxtaposition between public and very private is also explored, where the normative practice of radically disconnecting healing process from ‘normal' daily life is challenged. Important to the design as a whole is for the sanctuary to offer nurturing to both the inhabitants and to the landscape.
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    Spatial narratives: redefining permanent gendered spaces for temporal female traders in Eveline Street, Katutura, Windhoek
    (2022) Shaimemanya, Tuwilika Nailoke; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans, Hedwig; Truter, Jani
    In Windhoek and other South African cities six of eight traders are women. As noted by Huda Tayob, spaces occupied by female traders are sites of refuge and care within a highly contested urban realm. In Eveline Street, Katutura, Windhoek the capitalist uneven spatial development has led to continued movement from rural areas to the city. Yet the plethora of opportunities the street offers are limited when it comes to gender mainstreaming. The approach for designing has largely been self-built and conditioned for more men against women trading in the street. Furthermore, research shows that women are more likely to use their earnings on necessities such as food, clothing and education. It also shows that women constantly have to battle for safety in public spaces. The design component of this research study seeks firstly, to facilitate women's access to gendered spaces in these locales by taking on a feminist approach to urban design, by building on the thriving nature of everyday spaces on the street. Secondly, to establish how a collaborative design process between female traders and urban designers may result in better access to infrastructure, recreational spaces and public care within existing public spaces, across multiple scales in Eveline Street. Thirdly, to achieve the trade potential for women in order to ensure food security, vital job creation and poverty reduction. The methodologies used to represent the spatial processes in Eveline Street included: Participatory design methodologies, focus groups, storytelling, non-participant observations, video analysis, data analysis and desk research.
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    The landscapes we eat: reconnecting people to food production through agri-toursim
    (2023) Friederich, Yann; Hindes, Clinton
    The production of the food we eat has an effect on the landscapes around us, from deforestation, to air and water pollution. The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the most important components of our food system. Current conventional agricultural practices unfortunately degrade our soils. If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in 60 years. If we want to repair our soils, we have to change the way we farm, to change the way we farm we have to change the way we consume. To change the way we consume we have to learn how our food is produced and the impacts thereof. My thesis intents to create a demonstration site where people can learn about various soil creation processes, whilst experiencing a landscape with rare and beautiful heritage. With the improvement of the socioeconomic and ecological conditions of the local community at the forefront.
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    World design capital 2014: transforming Cape Town through design
    (2013) Makalima-Ngewana, Bulelwa
    Cape Town has been designated World Design Capital (WDC) for 2014. This designation is unique in its aim to focus on the broader essence of design's impact on urban spaces, economies and citizens. This audio lecture by Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana, the CEO of Cape Town Partnership, is useful for anyone who wants to know more about transforming Cape Town through design.