Acclaim for Durban architect student
A MONTCLAIR student has earned architectural acclaim with her awardwinning solutions for inner-city regeneration.
Katelyn Gopaul, 21, from the University of Kwazulu-natal, recently won the D’urban Rise
Inner City School Architectural Competition and collected R1 000 in the process.
Senior architectural students from UKZN were tasked with providing inner-city regeneration solutions, specifically how best to include a school in the inner-city environment.
Gopaul said the competition was compulsory for all third-year UKZN architecture students as it was integrated with their syllabus.
“It counted towards our degree so we had to do it,” she said.
All the students were taken to Albert Park where a Grade R to Grade 12 school would be based. They were given specifications for its facilities.
The assignment took just over a month to complete.
The first task was a thorough site analysis, which required the students to work together and critically analyse the features of the proposed site – Albert Park.
The deadline was September, just before the semester break.
Gopaul’s passion for architecture began in high school where she was exposed to it through school projects.
“I fell in love with it,” she said.