Category: Research

Design Research Learning Research Socio-Technical

Bachelor of Architecture (Honours)

The Slovo Park Project – The Story

The Slovo Park Project    The Slovo Park Project began as a small research project in the University of Pretoria’s Housing and Urban Environments module of the Architectural Honours Year.    It quickly gained momentum in its relation to the community it desire to understand the problems faced by South Africa’s Urban Poor. The process…

AZA Master Class 2010 – The Other Master Classes

During the Master Class I was fortunate enough to participate in, several others were run. More information can be found at AZA 2010 – Master Classes Although I did not see all the final products, below are some of the works I managed to document. The quality of the shots isn’t great, but I hope…

AZA Master Class 2010 – Convertible Cities

This year’s Architectural Student Congress was combined with the Architecture ZA (AZA 2010) and held in Newtown, Johannesburg. AZA 2010 hosted a Master Class session, which were attended by several prominent professionals and hosted at Arts on Main, just West of Johannesburg’s CBD. I was chosen amongst several other student submissions for an Autodesk Sponsored…

The Slovo Park Project – The Beginning

Quarter 4 The final quarter at the University of Pretoria allows for the students to select one project undertaken in the year under: Housing and Urban Environments, Heritage & Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Potential. The intention is for the student to take the proposal further into a design detailed level of resolution. This project then…

The Housing Clinic

The Housing Clinic From the standpoint that the issues around housing in South Africa are too complex and vast for anyone to easily get a grasp on the concept, the design seeks to give a tangible face to the solutions. The Approach The housing SA brand is meant to be the face for Housing South…

Housing & Urban Environments (H-UE)

Quarter 3  The final project for our 3 quarter session was that of Urban and Urban Environments, we were given a choice of 2 sites and expected to undertake the necessary research to and try gain an understanding of the urban condition of the area. From this we were expected to derive a building  that…

Heritage & Cultural Landscapes- Pretoria Art Museum

Quarter 1   My first project at the University of Pretoria was the adaptive re-use of the existing Pretoria Art Museum within the context of Arcadia Park. This was a particularly difficult project due to the unfathomably subjective possibilities of design approaches based on the notions of ‘Cultural Significance’. Anyone who has attempted a heritage…

Environmental Potential: Final Submission

Quarter 2   The refined proposal attempts to streamline the previous ideas and explain how the intervention makes the Carlton Center and the surrounding complex more ecologically responsive.   *   Deep Ecology Working from the previous post’s critique; the design works around the idea of Deep Urban Ecology and how each building is simply…

Environmental Potential: Part 2

Critique 2 After assessing the nature of JHB inner city more closely, a need for a stronger social approach became clear. The modified proposal approached the problem on a much more human scale. An Approach Although the buildings, the people, the flora and fauna all seem to occupy the same spaces and interact on a…

Environmental Potential: Part 1

Critique 1   Our new assignment is a adaptive re-use of the Carlton Center in Johanessburg CBD. Initial My initial idea was to flood the entire basement section (as the BRT system would provide future transport for all visitors and workers to the complex)and by harvesting all the rain water in the area, purifying it…

Learning Research

AZA Master Class 2010 – The Other Master Classes

During the Master Class I was fortunate enough to participate in, several others were run.
More information can be found at AZA 2010 – Master Classes
Although I did not see all the final products, below are some of the works I managed to document. The quality of the shots isn’t great, but I hope the ideas and the richness of the process can be seen.
I also included Hugh Fraser’s Digital Design Workshop, it was on display at the same venue and exhibited very interesting forms and textures.
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RE-IMAGINING THE MINING BELT

Michael Sorkin, Duzan Doepel (presented by Autodesk), Lindsay Bremner and Hilton Judin 

  • ‘This rare master class, featuring a who’s who of famously conscious international architects, is directed at developing alternative scenarios for Johannesburg’s mining belt. It is open to professional architects as well as architecture students.

Re-Imagining the Mining Belt will lay claim to the mining belt through opportunistic, experimental design thinking aimed at generating new urban relations, inventing new urban infrastructures, creating new urban publics and reasserting the mining belt into the urban imagination.


Once a churning metallurgical landscape, the mining land, with its headgear and golden dumps provided not only the city’s wealth, but also its iconic images. Johannesburg was synonymous with its mine dumps. Today this has changed. The dumps are disappearing. The mining belt is contested terrain. For some it is a toxic dump site; for others it is a source of new wealth through micro extraction and real estate development; some see it as disappearing urban heritage and for others, un-accommodated elsewhere in the urban system, it provides invisibility and cover.


The master class begins with the proposition that the mining belt is an environmental, economic and cultural resource for a more sustainable city. It asks architects to engage conceptually with this terrain vague, this unstable seam, this site where the city reveals itself, to imagine and represent its potential for future generations. It includes a site visit, the screening of a documentary, a workshop with stakeholders and the mapping of alternative scenarios. ‘


Architecture is involved in all kinds of systems, not just the use of materials and the consumption of energy. Architecture – simply put, a building – is always an interface between communication, social structures, economics and use.
 
– Duzan Doepel (presented by Autodesk) from his keynote address at AZA2010

* Excerpt taken from AZA Master Class Brief

Re- Imagining the Mining Belt – The Final Presentation
 
Concept Page – Igolide Elisha ( New Gold)
              
Soutfontein                                        Linear City                                               Historicity
  
   Detoxicity                                                       Urban Farm
Detoxicty
‘Through two days of intense walks throughout Joburg, participants may discover that no existing postcard of this city describes it either fully or partially. During the walks, they will each record, draw, photograph, print, write and capture the most unique, novel, everyday, inventive, imaginative and critical postcard of this city. “We will produce and present these postcards as the shortest story of this city: Johannesburg,” says Seraji.
 
The key to better architectural practice, believes Seraji, lies in unlocking one’s capacity for critical thinking. She proposes “a voyage through the most condensed periods of our practice of architecture in the past ten years – days of total disappointment, hours of extreme joy, and moments of radical thought: the life of an architect.”  ‘
 
Architects often forget that critical thinking depends on exposure, and that the simplest form of debate must start with a proposition. I believe that criticism is an essential interface that allows the architect to engage with the greater public. Somewhere in the 70s and 80s, architecture lost its conviction, its capacity for political activism, its power. It rose to stardom in the 90s; and when architects became as well known as pop singers, everyone started to desire architecture. Perhaps it is time to stop abusing the power of architecture and allow it to become once again a platform for critically, social awareness, and political engagement. We still believe in the power of architecture to make environments that allow us to enquire, measure, and determine our active position in society.
 
– Nasrine Seraji from her AZA2010 keynote address
* Excerpt taken from AZA Master Class Brief

 

Digital Design and Fabrication Workshop – 2010

© Jhono Bennett, 2010. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jhono Bennett and http://www.jhonobennett.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content
Action Research Built Work Design Learning Research Socio-Technical

The Slovo Park Project – The Beginning

Quarter 4

The final quarter at the University of Pretoria allows for the students to select one project undertaken in the year under: Housing and Urban Environments, Heritage & Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Potential.

The intention is for the student to take the proposal further into a design detailed level of resolution. This project then is detailed through to much more holistic architectural level. This quarter is also supplemented by an elective theory course in order to prepare the student for the Thesis Year ahead.

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Elective
My choice was the Housing and Urban Environment  project, as I felt there was still much to do and learn in Slovo Park.
The initial research group remained the same with the inclusion of a new member who worked on a different site, but whose design was not site based.
 
The Plan
Our lecturer’s offered us that, due to the level of community interaction, we could build a part of our intervention. But we would have to fund, manage and build the design with the community over the next 6 weeks. This built product would then be assessed on site and would be our final mark.
Getting Started
The first task was to decide which project to go through with, as the other students in the class would take forward their individual designs done over 8 weeks in the previous semester, we as a group would take further a group design, as our individual proposed designs were much more ambitious than we could possibly build with little to no money and in the time frame we had.
Choosing a Site
After we presented our individual work to the community during one of their official meeting we understood that their was no formal meeting spaces and the informal spaces did not work very well.
We chose a site, identified in Urban Analysis framework, as a key point at which the development of Slovo would take place by creating a platform for people to meet and discuss the future of their community.
(Bennett, Casson, Makgabutlane, Fillipe , Hattingh ; 2010)
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The Project In Brief…
After being contacted by the community of Slovo Park the University of Pretoria with the community have been researching and designing an upgrading and development plan for the settlement over the last few months.

The research team, made up of the community and the students, have identified a small portion of their proposed design in the form of a Community Center that will be built over the next six weeks.

The team has to arrange the funding, build the project and manage the entire process.

A comprehensive information pack is available on the Slovo Park Project Website

The Built Proposal
The design put together was infused with the principles learned during the individual proposals and seeks to provide the first step towards a much larger development.
This pilot intervention will lay the framework for the future development by uniting the community under a common goal and using that energy to project the project past our interaction with the community and make the design a true bottom up initiative.
Each built piece is intended to provide the necessary infrastructure for the community to use as its intended function now, without compromising its adaptability in future:

e.g.

The design of the paving with the intentional space for future columns to build the ‘future blue print’ for the community
or
the low seating walls for the mobile clinic waiting area will become the foundation walls for the proposed clinic in the future phase e.t.c

Built Phase & Future Phase.
The Built Phase will be the re-refurbishment of the existing community structure over the 6 weeks, this will set up the construction sequence for a much larger project development which we designed with the community.

The Future Phase is designed on a much larger scale and  requires more infrastructure and time than we have, but is outlined by the Built Phase
Each phase is incrementally designed so at each point the design can be critically reviewed by the community themselves to ascertain the most effective path towards the built product.’

Diagram of Building Phases – Presented to Community

Current State
The Slovo Park Project Team have begun site works, and are constantly seeking more funding and donations.
Below is the current program for the community building team.

The Slovo Park Project team has received overwhelming support from the community and is busy with site works at the moment, and moving swiftly along the scheduled program.
© Jhono Bennett, 2010. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jhono Bennett and http://www.jhonobennett.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content
Action Research Learning Photography & Film Research

Maputo – Documenting the Baixa

Maputo – Documenting the Baixa
 
 
Down town Maputo, known as the Baixa, is the oldest part of this city in decay. Colonised by the Portuguese  in the early part of the 18th century, the city was at one stage planned to be the new capital of Portugal before the war of Independence.

This complex layering of history and site was the site of a University of Pretoria research study in July 2010.
The research project had 20 students from the University of Pretoria documenting the historical buildings of the Baixa area using a contemporary technique known as the ‘Quick Scan’. This method is a fast tracked survey technique to quickly assess the economical and historic nature of an area to communicate to governmental powers possible solutions to maintaining the historical fabric of heritage areas while planning an economical strategy around it.

The first few days were spent getting to know the area as tourists before the real mapping began.
 
 
 
The Market
 
The market was our first experience of the historical nature of Maputo being actively and sustainably used and made viable.
 
 
The Monument to the Great War, erected as a memorial to the Portuguese that died during World War I.
The Maputo Rail Station
 
The Netherlands Embassy

We were fortunate to get a chance to visit the Dutch Embassy during trip. Here we were joined by a wild haired passenger known as Antoni Faulkers.

 
  

 

 
 
 
Procurando Pancho…
 
No Architectural trip to Maputo would be complete without a good deal of Pancho Guedes visitiation.
Smiling Lion
 
 
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This entry serves more as a photo journal of the architectural elements of the trip, and is soon to be updated with the analytical findings from the group.
© Jhono Bennett, 2010. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jhono Bennett and http://www.jhonobennett.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content