Cape Town, South Africa
2007
In Collaboration With: Patrick Jones, Vanessa Palmer, Laura Shipman, Angie Thebaud, Gena Wirth
The site provided an opportunity to create a center that would foster a sense of community ownership and a space serving an entire neighborhood with education and development projects.
Khayelitsha is the second largest township in South Africa, home to over 500,000 people. This project was affiliated with Art Aids Art and MonkeyBiz, nonprofit organizations working with a South African collective of women artists to create employment and empowerment for disadvantaged women through beadwork in the township.
The team led a participatory process involving the craftswomen and community members to in order to create a design providing transparency and openness for the artistic process while maintaining security. The community center required natural ventilation and needed to be predominantly self-sustaining (a small garden provides much of the food cooked in the cafe for the artisans and visitors). We first researched the climate and conditions of Khayelitsha, speculating strategies for incorporating natural resources. Security was also of primary importance, given the high crime rate in the township. We explored a variety of siting options until determining the most safe yet open configuration.
Throughout the design process, the projectKHAYELITSHA team focused on continuing research in several areas:
. materials, particularly the possible use of local/found objects to create a porous yet secure facade
. alternative energy strategies, including solar panels and passive heating/cooling
. green roof construction, tested in an on-site mockup (far right). The mock-up tested various soil/sand bases, depths, and plantings in order to determine the most effective use of the intended roof-garden.