Thursday 29 March 2012

Our new project for studio work :
This is our site for the located in Walmer. We required to design a hydroponics and market place. The site actually divides Walmer and Qebera township. Its interesting because our designs have to link the two places and accommodate sustainability.

The brief requires : hydroponics, community market which one has to be formal and the other informal.
It's going to be an exciting project!!

Tuesday 13 March 2012

New Refuge Gervasutti :

This is an interesting prefabricated tube structure located in Mount Blanc Range Torino Italy. It was designed as a refuge station for climbers to spend the night in. This structure was designed by LEAP Architects from Italy. It has an amazing interior which one wouldnt expect when looking at the exteriour of the structure. This particular design amazed me in the way that the structure sits at the edge of the cliff, has materials that stand out but still maintains a suttle and environmentally friendly feel on the site as.

The architects designed the struture to withstand the extreme environment and cinditions to which it is located. " The materials used with this structure are of high standared and use sophisticated technology capable of handling the problems of extreme temperatures and difficulties of installation".www.webecoist.momtastic.com

Saturday 3 March 2012


Cob : This is a natural building material i have explored for a detailing project on using natural building material to design a hut or shelter in Addo.
This was actually used in the past and is now being used in these modern time innovatively. From all the research that i've done, this is my understandig of the natural material: Cob is a mixture of sand, grass and water. It's considered an earth mixture. Generally cob wall are very thick,and this provides thermal mass to the structure, hence this works well as "sustainable and ecofriendly" ways of construction.

People have discovered that not only does cob have a sustainable function, but it is also cost effective. There are ways to which one can use the material in a creative way. For example : The image above shows glass bottles fixed in the cob wall, and artists have alo found a ue for this natural material by using it for sculptures. this material can be quite innovative when used in the correct design perspective.