Tag Archives | Leading Opinion

Schalk van der Merwe, one of the directors of Prism Architects based in Johannesburg and Polokwane, has his say. Architecture, a registered profession, has successfully allowed external factors to bring the profession under attack – once again! We have allowed space planners, branding agents, project managers and, to a lesser extent, developers to perform part [...]

Sarah Calburn of Sarah Calburn Architects has her say. I consider architecture an art, a complex technical and cultural and philosophical spatial language. However, when you look around at how it is making – or un-making – the landscape of our South African cities and suburbs, you can see that it has mostly fallen foul [...]

Phil Roös of Roös Klawansky Associates has his say. Looking around at the dwellings built by our complex human beings, I sometimes wonder what happened with our own habitat. For those of you who wonder what I am getting at, perhaps a short reminder of the definition of habitat will help: “Habitat is the natural [...]

Liam Mooney, Cape Town furniture designer one of the founders of the Whatiftheworld / Design Studio, has his say. I’m an avid reader of design blogs. In fact, checking the handful of blogs that I read daily is one of the first things I do when I switch on my computer in the mornings. There [...]

Professor Des Laubscher, CEO of the Greenside Design Center has his say. It is said that a recession is good for design because it stimulates true originality and innovation. How can design be leveraged to help overcome the current economic crisis? I don’t think we realise as designers the power of design thinking and how [...]

Professor Bert Olivier from the Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Port Elizabeth, has his say. The question of ‘women and architecture’ may be approached from different perspectives. One could, for example, catalogue in an encyclopaedic manner some of the contributions that women have made to the discipline worldwide, or here in South [...]

Bill Watts, retired architect and writer has his say. Okay, now that I have your attention, let me explain. The blight on the face of South African architecture in the ‘noughties’ has to be the widespread adoption of Tuscan architecture. It has encroached on the suburbs like the Parktown Prawn in built form, and like [...]