National 2010

KL-Metamatic: Ghost Ship scoops 2010 Corobrik Architectural Student Award

Stefan van Biljon of the University of Cape Town has won the prestigious Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year Award for 2010 with his entry entitled 'KL-METAMATIC: GHOST SHIP.’

KL Berth is a place in Cape Town dock. He wanted to create a structure which reflected the movement of nature and the impact of climate change. The architecture is inspired by the movement and the impact of the sea, their actions and corrosive elements. The rising water will also make visitors contemplate global warming. It is a scientific memory of the impact of the natural elements on a sustainable future. The judges selected his entry over the others’ because of his level of intellect, the richness of the way he thought through the concept. Selected from the top architectural students of the seven competing universities the award was announced at a function held at the Wanderer’s Club in Johannesburg on 30 March 2011. As the national winner, he received a prize of R45 000 from Corobrik to add to his regional winnings of R6 000.

A prominent theme of the event was sustainability that embraces a holistic approach, incorporating economic, social and environmental aspects in the design solution.

Corobrik managing director, Dirk Meyer, highlighted how this award fitted well with the organisation’s commitment to driving for sustainable outcomes in all aspects of the business and the respected role clay bricks can and do play throughout South Africa and abroad in providing enduring structural and aesthetic value to the built environment with low impacts on the natural environment.

He said, “The Architectural Student Awards programme was, in the context of global warming and the impact of buildings’ operations on the environment, becoming increasingly important in so far as it extended the platform for intellectual discourse and debate on the sort of architecture, design interventions, building technologies and material combinations appropriate for addressing the fragilities of the Earth. For devising from a myriad of design and material possibilities, those combinations able to achieve optimal solutions, resulting in architecture that is able to inspire and is also functional.”

While clay brick has helped define the architecture of civilizations and cultures it is a material that is now reinventing itself in the context of today’s environmental paradigm. For in the words of none other than Renzo Piano, ‘The challenge is to create buildings that are less violent in terms of their energy requirements and which are capable of achieving economies in the use of resources. Where possible we should seek to use materials that respect the environmental balance. One of these is ceramic. It is an ancient material that comes from the earth and returns to the earth but above all it has characteristics of strength, durability, unlimited colour potential and the capacity to reflect light, making it functionally perfect and extraordinary in various situations.’

Meyer added, “To be sensible and sustainable tomorrow’s architecture has to have low impact on non renewable resources and energy usage and he referenced how extensive research and thermal modelling both in South Africa and Australia had demonstrated how double skin clay brick cavity walling, with different levels of resistance depending on the climatic zone, outperformed alternate lightweight building technologies, providing more enduring solutions, superior thermal comfort, lowest life cycle energy costs and lowest life cycle costs”.

Building on the sustainability theme Henning Rasmuss of Paragon Architects in his keynote speech entitled ‘The Big Five: Building With Attitude’, focused on five big ideas that he considered important for adding integrity to the process of creating sustainable architecture.

The ideas included the design and specification process and material choices in lifecycle terms and the importance of defining the quality of the people resource, including even the employment practises of service providers on projects.

This is the twenty fourth year that Corobrik has sponsored the competition, which was initiated to promote quality design and to acknowledge talent among architectural students. These objectives are still the values on which this programme is based. Thesis students from Universities and qualifying Universities of Technology throughout South Africa are invited to submit entries for one of the seven regional competitions, the top students of which compete in the final.

As it recognises the positive impact that young graduates have on the future of the built environment, the award is coveted among architectural students about to enter the architectural profession. The quality and innovation of entries increase annually and this year was no exception.

The process of selecting the winner began on Monday, 28 March, when the students gathered at the Wanderer’s Club to erect scale models of their project. On Tuesday, 29 March, each finalist presented their thesis and discussed all aspects of it with a panel of judges in an hour-long interview.

The judging panel comprised Fanuel Motsepe from Motsepe Architects and current president of the South African Institute of Architects, Dean Jay of Jay Nel Architects, and Sarah Calburn of Sarah Calburn Architects and Peter Kidger, of Corobrik the convenor.

The judges observed that each of the entries have great relevance for the current times and the standard remains high, which is most commendable.

Sarah Calburn, representing the panel of judges commented, “It is in the incredibly wide range of concerns that you will see underpinning in various densities and agglomerations the work of every student here tonight. It is precisely this richness, this complexity, this degree of complication and simultaneous thought that makes architecture so difficult, and so endlessly interesting. It is precisely this rare combination that we, as jurors, have had to negotiate in coming to a final conclusion”

In the judging process each candidate was assessed against a number of criteria that included a comparison of each project’s groundedness in a world view, its technical merits and its sustainability in the long term.

Two hundred architectural students from various Gauteng universities and tertiary institutions attended the exhibition to discuss the entries with the finalists and listen to the Henning Rasmuss lecture during the morning. These students will be the practising professionals of the future and the topic, ‘The Big Five: Building With An Attitude,’ that highlighted the new culture and quality of collective decision making for achieving better buildings proved a thought provoking and a particularly apt message.

Via a Skype connection Stefan van Biljon who is working out of Renzo Piano’s offices in Milan, joined the prize giving event. After being hearing of his win he expressed his appreciation to Corobrik for the opportunity to take part in the event. Stefan also thanked his lecturers for the encouragement they gave him over the last year while he was developing his thesis.

University of Cape Town: Stefan van Biljon : Thesis Title: KL-METAMATIC: GHOST SHIP

The tension between an industrial site and natural forces inspired the project at Cape Town’s Duncan Dock. A seawall manifold reintroduces water to the reclaimed site. The tide is choreographed to create a changing landscape that registers the passage of time as the sea gradually consumes the site. The effects of the flood are used to amplify the atmosphere of the site. The flood machine communicates in gesture, compelling guests to interpret its response to the elements. Atmospheric restlessness is used to create a place of contemplation. Facing systematic destruction, the building haunts KL-Berth. This haunting is a function of patience and risk. The site becomes a barometer for wider environmental issues.

The judges critique on this project is:
Stefan van Biljon is from the University of Cape Town, and he spoke to us on Skype from Milan:

The KL Berth in Duncan Dock, Cape Town is an isolated post-industrial inner city relic (of sorts) that holds a strong childhood visual memory for the author of this thesis. Towering piles of junk were stockpiled on this dock for further transportation, implanting in the child’s eye an enduring image that has propelled, now, a highly enigmatic and personal project. A project that is intensely involved with both an examination and the stimulation of the acts which underlie the creative hand and imagination. This is really a thesis which examines the poetics of the very personal act of ‘making’. Through the making of ‘automatic drawings’ whose provenance and history is closely examined through the wider world of Surrealism, the machine-based fascinations of mid 20th century art with movement, exemplified for eg in the metamatic machines of Jean Tingeuly and critical readings of Situationist theory, Chance and the Unconscious are actively courted.

A project without direct ‘function’ as we know it, its author nevertheless manages to make direct and useful links to wider global currencies – in this case the effects of global warning and associated rise of sea levels. The building is timed to erode, the site is timed to flood, and flood again, parts of its envelope are machined to move with the tides --- its experience is calibrated simply by the silent personal journey. All parts of the building are alive to every human sense: sounds, textures, secrets, memories, sight and tastes are shaped, blinded or amplified through a sophisticated palette of industrial architectural and moving parts… This building speaks of paradox:

The confusion and blindnesses of an endless coming and going, the pointlessnesses implied by an uncompromising temporality (or life span) -- the paradox of extreme subtlety being embodied through a brute physicality.