Architects:
Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers
Location: Refilwe, Metsweding, Pretoria
South Africa
Project Team: Margueritte Pienaar, Morne Pienaar, Walter Raubenheimer, Anja Bredell-Oliver
Interior Décor: Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers
Project Year: 2012
Photographer: Walter Raubenheimer
Website: www.holmjordaan.co.za
Structural Engineers: Bigen Africa Services
Electrical Engineers: Bigen Africa Services
Landscape Architects: Insite Landscape Architects
Quantity Surveyor: Bigen Africa Services
Project Managers: Bigen Africa Services
Town and Regional Planners: Maxim Planning Solutions
Environmental and OHS: Nemai Consulting
Contractor: Excell Homes and Moeng Civils and Construction JV
From The Architects:
Refilwe nodal transformation forms part of an urban network of upgrades supported by the Neighbourhood Development Partnerships Grant, National Treasury, in the Metsweding area, City of Tshwane. This upgrade albeit a small and humble urban intervention, serves as an example of a local community taking great pride in the renewal of public space.
By simply formalizing open space through provision of a permeable edge condition, the area in front of various small shops was upgraded. An open-ended, covered area along the new periphery houses basic amenities of ablution, water, roof shelter and seating – while leaving a framework for a series of programmatic interventions, such as a car wash, waiting areas for taxi drop-off, hawkers accommodation and so on.
Along with patterns recalling local tradition, Maraba-raba and chess play boards are part of the horizontal field that binds the spatial diagram together. Robustness in design drove overall outcomes. As a result, apertures are screened off but no glass panes are included, and stainless steel and hidden fixtures were used for all sanitary ware.
The brick screens also helped to create a building interface with no “front and back” – usually a challenge given programmatic requirement of public ablutions in such central locations. Bright colour gives new identity to this small urban hub.
The local community was involved in the construction of the project and has taken great pride in this small, colourful intervention. During 2014 the area in front of the existing shops became a space for service-delivery protests. Not a single building or structure was damaged, attesting to the ownership taken by the local community.
Diepsloot is the kind of environment that requires input from the best, most courageous and inspired architects. It is not every architect who would have the patience and willingness to learn from this environment, or the humility necessary to create opportunities and bring human dignity to it...
If you want your own avatar and keep track of your discussions with the community, sign up to archiDATUM >>
The Tagliero building is at best the eccentric product of a relatively ambitious architect from Italy who sort to visualize the essence o...
Malawi suffers from one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world: in 2010, one in thirty-six Malawian women had...
The Outreach Foundation Community Centre was completed in early 2015, and is one of the first new social infrastructure projects to be bu...
The lattice work on the Infill houses that permeate the street of the infill house in Capetown is perhaps the first real striking featur...
The Revival Sunset Chapel in Libreville is perhaps Africa's Taj Mahal, built for a love that a Government Minister sort to bequeath as a ...
The project forms part of a larger renovation to a freestanding villa located high up on the slopes of the Vlakkenberg. The clients requi...