• Karoo Wilderness Center / Field Architecture

Architects: Field Architecture  
Location: Karoo,  South Africa
Project Team: Stan Field, Jess Field (Design Principals), Andy Lin, Erik Bloom, Chris Graesser
Project Year: 2013
Website: www.fieldarchitecture.com

Structural Engineers: Arup Conservation Management: Wilderness Foundation South Africa
Environmental Impact Analysis: Integrated Environmental Management
Project Area: 21,800 sqf

The architecture of the Karoo Wilderness Center is a result of a thorough process of investigation into the origins and character of the Karoo landscape and the flora and fauna that result from its particular qualities. 

The tectonic events that produced the specific topography of the site, trajectories of water runoff, wind movement, soil composition, and effects of plant and animal species on the landscape have converged to create the conditions of the site chosen for the Center. 

Each of these factors have in turn been subject to the impact of human inhabitation and vernacular building practices, amplified in recent generations to a harmful degree by shortsighted agricultural strategies and their associated effects of overgrazing, water over-manipulation and erosion.

Fundamental to the architectural response is the premise that the human species is an inherent part of the conditions that comprise and affect the landscape.  The significance of the Center, enhanced and informed by the activities that occur within and as an extension of it, lies in the co-dependence of the Center and the ecosystem as inherently bound entities. 

The architecture of the Center is intended to make evident the natural processes of the Karoo and establish a new precedent for building within and through an ecosystem defined by dynamic flux.

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