Creative Cape Town

At Design Indaba Conference 2011, designer-turned architectural revolutionary, Dror Benshetrit, announced an architectural structure that may help heal the world’s housing issues. QuaDror is based on interlocking Ls, a context-sensitive design structure that stands to give millions a decent, cost effective and culture-sensitive home. It started, quite simply, as a fancy, far-from-founded idea. And is now a reality.

With this in mind, take a trip down to the Fringe, Cape Town, where other young designers have recently embraced the spirit of innovation that drives an era and an area in evolution.

Through interest in the World Design Capital Bid, The UCT Architectural Department recently approached The Fringe to host a treasure hunt-cum-initiation project.

“The way we’ve structured this project is to make them think about space in a way that’s completely differently to the way we approach it in studio,” says Andrew Moerdyk, an Architectural Masters student and coordinator for Vertical Studio. “The medium is 3-dimensional space.”

The department is known for being partial to projects that involve students directly with the environments their work is addressing. This gives a solid grounding for the growth of their understanding and expertise and the success of the projects. Location might be everything, yes; but context is still king, and collaboration, quite definitely still queen.

263 students from first year to Masters students on the course from 14 – 18 February 2011 went walkabout on a tertiary-level treasure hunt that was innovative, engaging and self-propelling. Integrating students from different years helped build relationships and encourage the sharing of ideas and experience to form a truly vertical studio.

Clever clues helped familiarise and focus them on The Fringe’s particular needs and blessings. A presentation introducing the area saw them settling into the groove from day one.

A series of bespoke briefs guided and addressed issues in the area and formed the basis of their week’s work.

With grad students in situ, they set their minds and hands to interlinking, pet projects working in a fourth-floor warehouse space in Barrack Street. They designed the Camissa River’s surfacing at Darling Street, for example, and the capture of the southeaster for energy. Focus was also on the redevelopment of single buildings, designing new street furniture and lighting for the proposed pedestrian walkways.

On the unorthodox, grassroots, creative approach, Andrew is unforgiving ““We’re trying to break away from what it means to be an Architecture student. People feel Architecture is quite dry; we feel we’re as creative as fine artists.” His partner in putting first years to work and the lead organiser of the project, Mandy Pretorius, agrees. “It’s important that they’re on site and working with the space and are responsible for it.”

Responsibility is key to design and development in the area, as is integration. The week-long faculty programme fitted the favoured “triple helix” theory, a development principle that favours collaboration between government, business and education towards holism and sustainability. “By getting the ‘creative’ educational departments to bring their students to re-imagine and develop ideas for The Fringe means,” Cape Town Partnership’s Fringe Co-ordinator, Yehuda Raff points out, “that what we are trying to create is already happening – that The Fringe is the creativity and innovation centre in the city.”

At the end of the week, the students held an exhibition party with mock-up models that doubled up as art installations, short films that found their purpose in purpose-built structures, painted artworks and scripted sculptures representing their week’s work and learning.

A series of judges listened closely and commented on the work, making this one of the more exciting, enlightening and interactive exhibitions the area has seen.

Some might say that getting a bunch of first years to build pretty letters is not doing much to develop the city, but the more open-minded would do well to reflect on the possibilities of imagination meeting engineering.

Yehuda reflected on his first-hand impressions of the learning process. “The work was a very quick, 3-day attempt to deal with a number of very complex urban challenges. What was most interesting about the work was the fresh and ‘on the street’ view the students took. Every project touched on one or more of the key challenges in the area and helped remind us why this is such an important project. I’m looking forward to the next iteration, which we will see in April 2011, when some more thorough reviews by UCT Architecture students will be completed.”

Think, again of Dror Benshetrit, a man who stands to change the world’s housing crisis with a pair of interlocking Ls.  With the project being a solid success and a step forward in collaborative forward thinking, the supporters of The Fringe continue to promote and develop the space as a creative and innovative hub.

Going forward, let us actively support and engage our young (and established) professionals and creatives in thinking outside the box, beyond the Fringe and into the future that is just around the corner.