Architecture: our cities

ArchitectureZA 2015, hosted by the South African Institute of Architects, took place at The Sheds@1Fox in Johannesburg last week (24-26 September) and brought students, entrepreneurs, international and national thought leaders together to share ideas, collaborate and debate on the future of our cities.

More than 1000 passionate people collaborated at the design event to discuss socially conscious design.

The conference and festival took place in the heart of Johannesburg where architecture and design have played an instrumental part in shaping the city to what it is today.

Daniel van der Merwe, president of the Gauteng Institute for Architecture and chair of the event spoke about Johannesburg and how the city has been transformed.

“There are a lot of old build- ings that have been transformed in new spaces to aid in social responsibility. Urbanisation is happening and as we start living closer and closer to each other we need to redefine our concept of ‘space’ to support future generations’ needs.”

The conference welcomed international speakers including Alfredo Brillembourg, co-founder of Urban-Think Tank in Caracas, Venezuela and economist, Arturo Brillembourg. The brothers spoke about their South African project, Empower Shack, and the gap between a shack and lowincome housing. The Empower Shack project, in collaboration with Ikhayalami, seeks to upgrade informal settlements with a double-storey shack design.

Peter Kidger, Director of Marketing at Corobrik, took attendees through the contribution of clay bricks to healthy, energy efficient and sustainable built environments. He also spoke about clay bricks’ limitless flexibility in design to create inspiring form, rich in colour and texture, with great functionality.

Another speaker was Daniel Silke, political analyst and futurist. He emphasised that the issue of carbon growth is very important and that cities have to address it, especially emerging cities. Silke believes that smaller units of living will be the future city for some parts of the world, as well as vertical buildings. He said collaboration in spaces will be a trend in urban areas.

Silke ended by highlighting the seven core attributes of cities - streets; water; sanitation; policing; efficient administration, and issues of equity and sustainability.

ArchitectureZA 2015 is on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/architectureza.