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| Eric Wrights workshop #studioATdenverUIA |
From GP to ND it was… After some time we were all set and ready to travel from Johannesburg, Gauteng to Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal for the annual architecture world cup.
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| UIA Beach interaction |
We arrived in sunny warm weather and that just set the spirit that it was going to be an entertaining week in and out of the International Convention Center (ICC).
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| Morning sunrise in warm Durban. |
Sunday arrived and we were all on our way to the ICC to go and register for what we thought will be a quick process was rather not, standing in queues to get our “goodie bags” was not so cool.
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| Sunday 03 Aug registration queues |
The week ahead was rather exciting with so many activities taking place, from international speakers to debates to workshops to awards presenting and so it was a full week of learning from one another from all over the world.
The exhibition that was held was quite exhilarating as there were numerous company’s trying to showcase there products for us architecture people and students to utilize in the industry. The department of public works were of great importance and help to us students as they spoke to us about job opportunities.
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| UJ Exhibition of students work. |
The exhibition area was of a great success not only to UJ but the representatives of UJ at the exhibition area as UJ was heavily involved with the Monty Sack exhibition which was created by the use of pellets to make it more attractive and interesting to the visitors.
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| Monty Sack Exhibition maned by UJ. |
Numerous of our UJ lecturers had presentations going on in Durban such as Jhono Bennet, Ken Stucke and Eric Wright. Ken spoke about re-imagining Johannesburg from scratch as a 40km radius and how Johannesburg could’ve developed if it was done differently which was enthralling as it has an emerging center to the whole idea of re-imaging a city. Eric Wrights workshop was of quite excitement and engaging as it was all about #StudioATdenverUIA which was trending on twitter as the workshop was running in collaboration with the students that remained in Johannesburg during the course of the week.
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| Eric Wrights workshop #studioATdenverUIA |
Some interesting international speakers that we could take away from were Toyo Ito, Rahul Mehrotra and Cameron Sinclair. Jo Noero and Peter Rich were some of the locally based architects that presented some of there work that was of high standards.
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| From left to right Binaica Morar (UJ 3rd Year),Toyo Ito,Heidi Lu (UJ 3rd Year). |
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| Toyo Ito ending off his presentation. |
UIA 2014 brought architects from around the world to debate their common concerns and interests – through an unashamedly African lens. African knowledge, African challenges and African opportunities entered into a dialogue with the world. UIA 2014 was an opportunity for African architects to make their mark in the debate that perceives poverty eradication as a first unavoidable step in human progress.
JHB Collaboration
The students that remained in Johannesburg were tasked to map out the figure ground of Denver and to make a stencil that referred back to the site. The map was then taken to site and stitched onto the beer hall were we originally painted for Mandela day.
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| Groups working on the stencil in studio. |
Relevant data in terms of Denver were also mapped in the week by the students that remained in Johannesburg.
The students that remained behind really kept the process going of the project and to not let it stand still. The students did a great job in terms of mapping the figure ground of the Denver settlement as you can now actually refer back to it on site and collaborate with the settlement people on site using the painted stencil map.
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| Our group that remained behind in JHB Stitching the stencil onto site. |
As a group we learnt alot from one another even though we were not by one another but rather gathering information that we learnt in Durban and in JHB and bringing it back together the following week.
Aformal Terrain 