School of Architecture and Planning

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Clinic Building
(Self published, 1980-01) Nimpuno, Krisno
The objective of constructing low cost health buildings is not simply to build cheaply, but rather to construct fully adequate facilities for the lowest possible cost; or, in other words, to achieve a maximum health care capacity from each invested dollar. This may seem to be a very superficial remark, but there are in reality staggering differences in costs between hospitals of equal capacity within almost each of the LDCs, which give us ample reason for questioning the present practice. Does anyone really, helieve that ,medical €are .is ten times more effective in a ten times costlier hospital bed? Does anybody believe that a reasonable hospital bed/population ratio can be achieved with high rise, air conditioned hospitals in countries with a GNP/Capital of less than $500:- per annum? The answer is naturally no. Nobody believes that. But why do governments and technical assistance agencies build such costly facilities? The answer is that the elites taking those decisions are not sincere in their proclaimed efforts to provide equal care for the whole nation.
Metropolis; architectural students congress
(Architectural Students Congress Committee, 1986-04) Elk, Clifford (ed) et al
We are of Africa, and have been misguided and mislead into thinking that our cultural and architectural aspirations should coincide with other Western Nations of the world, best demonstrated by not only the content of our education but also by the state of the architectural profession. This is precisely the stand that the congress took, being highly critical of the imagery and ideas imported per se, while attempting to redress the question of relevancy, symbolism and meaning of architecture in South Africa today, the role that the architect plays and how our education currently fashions our perception.
Local Government, Gender and Integrated Development Planning
(HSRC Press, 2007) Todes, Alison; Williamson, Amanda; Sithole, Pearl
The South African Constitution is one of the most progressive in the world. It demonstrates a commitment to promoting equality for men and women, and entrenches women's rights. This commitment is carried through in several government policies, but there are debates about the extent of its implementation. Since 1994, local government has become a more important sphere than before. It is bigger than it once was, and has a larger mandate than before. \it has been described as the 'hands and feet' of the government, and is expected to play a key role in developing its local areas. Like national government, local government must carry through the commitment to women's empowerment and gender equity.
City Planners
(HSRC Press, 2009) Todes, Alison
City planning is a small profession, with only 3 790 graduates by 2004. Data sources on the profession are limited, and there are only a few, mainly qualitative studies. 'Planning' as it is described in the Planning Professions Act (No.36 of 2002), was designated as a 'scarce skill' in the context of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) and the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) (Berrisford 2006; Dol 2006b) Lack of Planning capacity was seen as constraining development in two main ways: through slow processing of land development applications, which was seen as holding up development; and through the lack of transformation of South African cities, perpetuating conditions such as long and costly travel to work, with impacts on labour costs. Further, the focus on infrastructure-led development would also require increased planning capacity.
Gender in Planning and Urban Development
(Commonwealth Secretariat, 2009-12) Malaza, Nqobile; Todes, Alison; Williamson, Amanda
There is increasing evidence that women and men experience cities in different ways. Therefore gender-sensitive urban planning is needed. However, like other built environment occupations, the planning profession has traditionally been ‘gender blind’. The Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) has been a strong advocate for ‘reinventing planning’ (Farmer et al. 2006). CAP argues for ‘planning as an inclusive process ... rooted in concerns for equity’ (CAP 2008). Gender equality is one dimension of this kind of inclusive planning. This position, which was endorsed by the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in 2006, also reflects the Commonwealth’s strong commitment to gender equality. So why does gender matter in urban planning? And, what might ‘gendered planning practice’ hope to achieve?
An Interpretation of Sustainable Development and Urban Sustainability in Low-Cost Housing and Settlements in South Africa
(University of Cape Town Press, 2003) Irurah, Daniel K; Boshoff, Brian
The sustainable development paradigm can be viewed as a convergence of two paradigms that initially evolved in an antagonistic manner, possibly as far back as the industrial revolution. The first one is the growth and development paradigm, which was strongly rooted in economic growth based on the economic output of an economy as measured by GDP (gross domestic product). Until the late 1900s, governments and communities had committed themselves to a vision of improved standards of living through increasing the GDP of their respective economies, while paying minimal attention to environmental and resource impacts. Then in the 1950s to 1970s the environmental movement coalesced after almost a century of isolated pronouncements on resource and environmental degradation arising from exponential population growth as well as increasing levels of production and consumption. The movement argued that unless humanity voluntarily controlled population and economic growth, environmental and resource degradation would put a limit on human survival. The strongest substantiation of the argument was presented in the Club of Rome Report, Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972).
Book review: The Architecture of Demas Nwoko, by John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood
(Farafina, Lagos, 2007) le Roux, Hannah
Given the challenges of access and archives, it is hard to get down to detail in the documentation of modern African architecture. This architectural monograph by Nigerian based architects John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood is a moving and meticulous catalogue of the designed work of their friend, the artist Demas Nwoko, that is refreshingly full of both architectural and anecdotal details. It begins with two short essays on Nwoko’s creative background and an analysis of his approach to design, but for the most part describes, in drawings, text and photographs, his twelve built and five unexecuted works.
Alterations to existing House
(ELLE, 2009) Le Roux, Hannah
This tiny project added a small, largely indeterminate space to my house. It faces the garden and resolves the difficulty of a house with an existing kitchen on the north. The L shaped sliding doors and windows can be opened in different configurations, and along with the mobile, folding table, allow for winter/summer, indoor/outdoor, public/private variations of eating or just working in this stoep.
Architecture from the frontline.
(Domus, 2008-07-31) le Roux, Hannah; Southwood, David; Duker, Rob
The photographs of Noero Wolff’s Red Location Museum suggest a post-traumatic state: all debris, dust and raw material, roaming children, and a tight, almost tense order that holds it all together. The building has striking composure, but it is the gritty setting that locates it in a compelling narrative. Noero Wolff won the commission in an open competition in 1998. The brief envisaged a museum and craft centre to celebrate South Africa’s history of struggle at its heart, in Red Location, an old township that had shown strong resistance to apartheid. The post-apartheid government developed such sites as a policy of representation: unable to bring immediate wealth to their vast numbers of impoverished supporters, it invested in symbolic projects for museums and parks that could bring the subsequent benefits of tourism.
The Congress as Architecture: modernism and politics in post-war Transvaal
(Picasso, 2007-01) le Roux, Hannah
Two significant strands of South Africa’s history - the precocious modern movement architecture of the Transvaal Group, and the political resistance that led up the Congress of the People and the Rivonia trial - remain the research subjects of quite separate disciplinary fieldsb. One of the few pieces of writing to span between the two is Rusty Bernstein’s autobiography, Memory Against Forgetting (), which traces his involvement in the political events of the 1950’s, while alluding how the theory and practice of architecture helped to support him in both material and ideological ways. Despite the optimistic title of Bernstein’s book, there is a real threat of memory loss around the way in which the events of the postwar period related to the ideals of modernity that, in both its spatial and social manifestations, was to inspire South Africa’s political transformations as late as in the 1990’s. This article revisits memories of the earlier period in order to suggest some associations between the apparently diverse areas of architectural utopianism and practice, political theory and activism, and the specific events around the planning of the Congress of the People in 1955. These associations suggest that there is an imaginative vision at the heart of modern architecture that is quite elastic, conceptually: one capable of translation into diverse manifestations, some physical, some unrealisable, and some only to be realised at another time. The article is inspired by the stories of a handful of radicalised white architects in the 1950’s, whose early formation overlaps with the emergence of the Transvaal Group. These architects, including Rusty Bernstein, Ozzy Israel, Alan Lipman, Roy Kantorowich and Clive Chipkin, studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in the late 1930’s, or in the immediate post-war period. These architects are not remembered for their designs but for the influence of their political positions on events. They were drawn to opposition politics as a way of achieving conditions of freedom and equality,conditions that would be necessary in order to implement the progressive modern architecture in foreign journals and books, including discreetly acquired copies of Architektura CCCP , that inspired them. However these conditions were not to be met in their working careers, and political events - the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961 and the Treason Trial - led them variously into exile, imprisonment, writing work and practice within the very limited circle of private clients who shared their ideals. Their most significant building, according to Clive Chipkin, was the ephemeral infrastructure that they designed and built near Soweto with hessian and timber for a political rally, the Congress of the People, in 1955. This event launched the Freedom Charter, a list of fundamental social demands including access to housing, schools and freedom of association, and in turn, in the 1990’s, became the basis for the spatial ideals of the new nation of post-apartheid South Africa. Rusty Bernstein played central roles in organising both the space and the written text of the Freedom Charter. The Congress architects’ political activities contrast with mainstream architectural activity, which was largely supportive of the capitalist apartheid state. To trace this history, it was necessary to use personal narratives as evidence, in the absence of a drawn or built archive: indeed, this may be a rare case in architectural history where the paper archive was swallowed in the face of a police raid. In its motives, this article, as well as paying tribute to a generation whose political choices led to personal hardship, tries to broaden the limits of architectural discourse to include not only built products but also their rebus, their exclusions. It suggests that what is not able to be realised does not necessarily disappear, but rather, might be translated into some other mode. Seeing the Congress as architecture draws attention to the other modernisms of the imagination that cross between transnational boundaries, between conditions of the built and the unbuildable.

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