Educational
NWA Educational Architecture Design Projects
Skukuza Science Leadership Initiative
May 2017
Competition winner in collaboration with a local architect Kevin Mitchell. An eco-campus in the Kruger National Park including administration, student and staff accommodation, canteen, library, laboratories and auditorium, with associated services. The building uses primary materials (including rammed earth and recycled rubble from the site), and looks at human comfort through the creation of micro-climates rather than relying energy intensive add-on systems. A full time architect from our office is seconded to the site to support contractors in order to overcome the challenges of alternative building methods.
Lecture theatre, library and laboratory operational from end of May 2017, with accommodation and canteens ongoing.
Literacy Lab
2019
This Literacy Lab was a Golden Ticket-type competition prize. It had to be designed so that it could comply with any of the climate zones - we had no idea where it would end up.
This explores the container type and seeks to make a warm embracing environment to nurture reading and imagination. Pop-outs make withdrawal niches for bean-bags and a work surface for tablets, whilst a pop up brings light into a story-telling area.
Ollie's Garden
2009
Built in memory of a young pupil at the school, this project was more an architectural structure for a landscape that gives space to the past, the present, and the future; to memory and imagination.
An overlay or meandering pathways through the long grasses and aloes intersecting a main stair give time for pause and reflection. The flowing stream that runs through the paths maintains a dynamic flow of energy and movement in the space.
The Greenhouse People's Environmental Centre
2002 - 2008
This project evolved out of Earth life Africa’s desire to have a practical entity looking at exploring environmental issues in a way that challenges legislative obstacles in the trenches as opposed to on paper.
The project looks at many different types of sustainability (active, passive, primary materials, more high tech) in combination. Projects concluded include a recycling center; re-use of a potting shed as offices; a rammed earth/straw bale/timber conference/meeting space and various proposals around the restoration of a 1939 industrial conservatory.
