Achieving sustainable built environments with low impacts on the natural environment has become a given for today’s architect. Energy usage in buildings is under the spotlight. Water wise projects are most likely to get the go ahead. That’s why an in-depth understanding of the environmental constraints and impacts of technologies on architectural solutions is emerging so important for students of architecture. It is the resolution of environmental issues within the sustainability quantum that can be expected to drive architectural expression that will shape tomorrow’s new and reconstituted buildings and the creation, extension and redevelopment of our towns and cities.
After 25 years sponsoring the Architectural Student of the Year Awards, Allin Dangers, Corobrik Director of Sales, Inland said that the company had seen many changes in the approach to specifying building products. Today’s strong focus on environmental sustainability has raised many new questions of materials manufacturers with answers sometimes based more on assumption than researched fact. Corobrik choose a long time back to avoid such a pitfall, committing resources to research to better understand why clay brick offers so much to the thermal efficiency of buildings and just where Corobrik products fell in embodied and operational energy terms. The bottom line from the research is that the embodied energy values of Corobrik clay bricks are competitive in international terms and that when it comes to thermal performance of walling envelopes namely thermal comfort and lowering energy usage for heating and cooling, double skin clay bricks walls with the appropriate use of resistance within the brick skins supports lowest operational energy outcomes. This contribution of clay brick to the sustainability of our built and natural environments is set to underpin the relevance and use and clay brick in modern architecture.
He said this year’s regional winner Clifford Gouws and his project Magazine Hill: A weathered continuum as well as runners up Ahmed Alkayyali, Jankel Nieuwoudt and winner of the prize for best use of clay masonry, Petri van Wyk, demonstrated that future architects were embracing the sustainability agenda with environmental issues achieving equal status with functionality and aesthetics.
Clifford Gouws dissertation proposes to use an abandoned historical military site on Magazine Hill in Pretoria He says,” my thesis is rooted within a process of unification, a personal struggle to understand the fragile relationship that exists between architecture and time. The site consists of two underground ammunition magazines, five bomb shelters and ammunition factories, all structures that represent an era of unrest in South Africa. In 1945 a mysterious explosion of the Central Magazine scarred the face of Magazine Hill, leading the activities on the site to an early death, trapping architecture in time and abandonment.”
“The project places contemporary commemorative architecture under the limelight, criticizing the static notion of heritage commemoration through the typologies of museums and memorials. The architectural response of this dissertation is thus focused on commemoration through everyday use.”
A brass foundry is proposed to recycle the spent ammunition shells of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), thereby introducing brass artists as a public interface to Magazine Hill. Where ammunition was once produced, ammunition is now reduced. This programme could form mediation between the public and the military; exposing different layers of the past by reinstating a connection between architecture and time,” concludes Gouws.
Runner up Ahmed Alkayyali proposes a surveillance centre in Pretoria with his thesis Liminal Public Infrastructure.
Everyday the city plays out its spectacle unnoticed. This quotidian context is one that is full of complexity, spontaneity and possibility. It is here that architecture can engage with the city and its user, space and experience; challenging conventional architectural typologies. In public space architecture can enhance and celebrate the everyday. The project investigates all these aspects within the city of Pretoria and more specifically along van der Walt Street, focusing on the urban cavity at Munitoria.
Surveillance is conceptually used to experience this spectacle, on multiple levels of interpretation. An inhabited stairway is developed to link the urban cavity, back to the city. Where the architecture is reduced to support both the concept of surveillance and experience.
In third place is Jankel Nieuwoudt, his thesis is a High Street Abattoir. Using a deserted industrial site he recommends an urban abattoir. The design creates a dialogue between the public and the abattoir by adopting the methodology of reclaiming the entire animal carcass as done in South African ritual slaughter. The design incorporates numerous sustainable systems to reduce the waste found in abattoirs.
Petri van Wyk won the best use of clay brick award for her entry entitled, ‘Die Wagte van Pretoria, ‘n stedelike voetslaanroete’’. Her thesis is a hiking trail in the city of Pretoria to communicate the current and historic landscape and to illustrate the connections that existed between original fortifications. The distortion of heritage by the contemporary landscape of Pretoria is investigated by an overnight facility design at the Eastern Redoubt on Strubenkop, Lynnwood.
Petri said, “I used clay brick as a contemporary stone for a present-day stronghold or fort (the overnight facility) in memory of the original stone fort that once stood on the hill. The versatility of brick provided me the opportunity to communicate my concept of distortion in the contemporary ruins exhibition area.”
“The brick is used as infill for the steel frame structure to add thermal mass that will help moderate indoor temperatures. This had to be done as the building accommodates an outdoor lifestyle thus the whole experience had to be external without giving up the comfort of the occupants (no glass has been used).”
“Brick is available in standard sizes which make it easy to transport and handle on site without trampling the fragile, historic site with massive machinery. Finally, the use of red clay face brick was inspired by the natural colour palette of the Magaliesberg Moutain Range of which Strubenkop is part.”
The awards, which offer a R7 000 prize for the winner, a R5 000 prize for second place, a R3 000 prize for third place and a R3 000 prize for best use of clay masonry took place at the University of Pretoria. Each regional winner is entered into the national finals in March next year where the winner will receive R50000.
“These awards were created to promote quality design and to acknowledge talent among architectural students and it is particularly rewarding to witness how the awards programme is promoting discourse and debate towards what constitutes good architecture. The role of the architectural community is key to defining the ultimate integrity of our built environments and for creating time honoured spaces that people feel comfortable to be in, are uplifting and relevant to those who use and witness them,” continued Dangers.
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