The new year started right with a small project at the wild coast in the eastern cape province. The donated container finally arrived and construction on the temporary workshop unit started.

Climate conditions differ much from Johannesburg but buildCollective approach stays the same.
As the hot and humid climate at the exposed site does not necessarily suit the light-clay and less insulation capacity but rather cooling qualities are needed we looked at some buildings in the area.

To stay green, easy and fast to build and provide protective cooling qualities we adopted the traditional construction of woven branches filled with earth. Three 200 by 70 Pillars were casted, hessian (jute) and welding mesh were tightened around them, connected with wire and filled up with earth. A new self-produced truss was created – timber with bended flatsteel , much lighter and easy to join and rejoin.

A small team of three people of the neighbourhood joint the experimental workshop construction and were excited by the strength of the wall. After filling the wall got an ordinary plaster job by the local team.

Another training object getting closer to a small housing unit is the extension of a staff or admin building. As the school grows number of learners and teachers extend, the existing space was getting too small.

We started talking to the principal and teachers about space, use and openings. Main issue was to include a so called safety box to safely store equipment like computers, documents and most important the national exam papers. Other important features were the view to and therefore control of entrance and parking area. Inside will be one big table for staff meetings, some desks at the windows and shelves. Besides the input of users the design is based on an existing concrete slab, orientation to the sun, circulation and a standard window-frame based grid.

As usual all parts were produced in house – concrete pillars, steel trusses, wooden frames and walls filled up with light-clay. The sealing is insulated and the safety box fully made of concrete with a strong steel door.

In the actual construction process the team of practical staff plus some additional help was forced to work more independent, setting goals and daily tasks on their own. This lead to discussions and autonomous decision making of the actual built design, for example of the window boxes.

The Implementation of the Ithuba Community (Skills) College started in 2007. In the past 4 years the school grew rapidly through the construction of classrooms, halls and workshop-space with buildCollective, different European architecture universities and local labour force. The founder and holder of the school is the Austrian NGO s2arch.

As built space, number of learners and infrastructure grow the overall development, organisation, management of the different departments and network, as well as practical education, maintenance and relations between departments and participants got a bit left behind. The 8 weeks construction or even shorter periods of guest- teachers and other projects with their event like character cannot provide long term strategies or foundation for the school programme.
Principal, teachers and staff are busy with the daily business and are neither capable nor authorised of overall decision making concerning the school development.
The approach laid mainly in developing strategies to formalise and strengthen relation and responsibilities of and between the different departments and programmes (academics, wood and steel, sewing, garden and catering, facility management, maintenance and repair, art/dance, construction projects, volunteers,… ) as well stakeholders and management. Another issue was the identification and addressing of current challenges and networking with local organisations, government and supporters.

A report and summery of experiences, contacts, strategies and suggestions of development will be handed over to the organisation s2arch.

photo credit: oliver hirtenfelder

One of the sponsors of Ithuba – the Bank of Austria came again for two weeks ‘hands on’ – this time to the Ithuba wild coast school. After discussions with the school management a plan was set up to channel labour force in the most useful way. We expected a donated container to build a workshop unit around it but customs took their time and so the team mainly focused on extending the playground, setting up a teacher’s office, a sports field, temporary toilets, building shelves, blackboards and planting trees and corn.

A team of local labour was employed to plaster the first classroom inside and outside as well finishing the floor with a nice polished cement topping. A neighbouring household in the community took care of food for the motivated workers and volunteers.
Besides cutting and joining timber, digging holes and painting there was also time to visit the village, talk to members of the community and play with the kids.

At the end we had a nice little party everybody dancing to kwaito music and the kids handed over paintings they did to say thank you for the new facilities.

The TaxiRank Container implemented by buildCollective together with the community is a lively place of different activities.

In the morning fat cakes and coffee serve people waiting, during the day you can get a kota (kind of sandwich/hamburger) or vegetables and sweets. Information for the community is displayed and the space is used as meeting point and exchange platform.

Youth organisations use the space as base for soccer matches or holliday celebrations like 15th of july, celebrating the winners, playing music and hosting the well-known organisers who teamed up with youth workers of the nearby township.

In September the TaxiRank container presented an exhibition initiated by Anja Planiscek, curated by Peter Rauch and Sanele Ziqubu.
Under the theme – HOMES I have not been to – the participatory photographic project asks questions like how a space someone inhabits becomes home? Is it only a physical space, a shelter from the outside and public life, that makes home for us? Or – is home something more intangible, not necessarily enclosed by walls and a roof?

The Project started 2010 in Magagula Heights, continued in Slovenia and came back to south Africa with exhibiting these Homes of different parts of the world that do not seem very different in the pictures.

Check out
http://snabyrow.com/anjaplaniscek/1

Two new examples of the lightweight straw and clay construction method were built from August to October by the RWTH Aachen and the University of Slovenia. Both projects – a classroom/ lab unit and a multipurpose hall used steel as loadbearing structure (even though prices on steel went up big time) but do have different approaches in the design. Besides orientation with the sun and a double layer roof for circulation – one a landmark with a work intensive space truss construction and big windows, the other – a frame grid based functional mantle.
The height and size of the straw walls reached limits and needed some additional wooden support. Some new materials and methods were introduced like 16mm reinforcing rods for trusses, steel window frames as pillars, cloth-reinforced fabric as sealing and furniture designs with no cut offs.

We had meetings in the beginning between teachers and students of the School and the architecture students from abroad to get to know each other, explain the design and adapt some ideas. It was a hectic time of construction pushing the limits of all teams – students, practical staff, caterers and builders of the local community. Meetings with project leaders and local foremen kept everybody updated and responsible.
Both buildings are already in use, still in drying process and about to be finished and plastered with the gained knowledge of the clay-plaster workshop.

Get more information on
http://gbl.arch.rwth-aachen.de/ddb
http://www.saip.si

In September we had the pleasure to welcome clay plaster expert Tatsuya Tokura from japan! Besides some vocabulary (arrigato, kampaii and others…) the plaster team was set up – first to replaster the classroom and library made by the University of Slovenia inside and outside as well preparing mixes for the primary classroom of the FH Carinthia. One of the practical students joint the team from the community, which already have some experience in ordinary cement plastering, to pass on the knowledge also to the next generation.

We visited clay-mines to find the most suitable clay in town, tried out a lot of different mixes in different colours and looked at some some traditional South African clay construction methods to compare.
Different mix proportions for different layers to plaster the straw-light-clay walls were made with red sand, clay, lime (whitewash), small straw and some cement. Inside the classroom yellow sand and more lime to get a light colour. For the second building we left out the cement and chicken wire as lathwork at all and used red clay, sand, whitewash, straw and jute as plaster reinforcement to fully keep thermal and constructive advantages of the light-clay.

Everybody involved learned a lot on japanese accurateness, good tools and different steps from starting with the corners to avoid cracks, work in layers with different mixes, patient drying process and straight edges to continuously floating and brushing at the end to get the famous shiny topping.

From community architecture to community dance – buildCollective got the chance to prove handling of 400 people for a three day performance in a township community hall.

For the whole of the month of August 2011, the Ithuba Community College, based in the south of Katlehong, put its focus on a Community Dance Project with an internationally renowned team of choreographer, composer, lighting designer and dance assistants from the UK, Austria, Germany and Mexico.

The project was led by choreographer Tamara McLorg, founder member of the Community Dance movement in the UK, working in close tandem with composer Christopher Benstead and lighting designer Pete Ayres. As a team, they have created and overseen hugely successful Community Dance projects of a very high, professional standard in Europe, The Americas and Africa. The project at the Ithuba College was mainly funded by the Austrian NGO s2arch, Caritas Vienna, and the Peter Gläsel Stiftung.

During a four‐week intensive rehearsal period, 100 students of the Ithuba Secondary School, together with the creative team, produced a new dance performance, presented at the end of August at the Zonkizizwe Community Hall. Students and staff from the school were involved in creating one hundred costumes, making music and helping with technical aspects of the production, thereby supporting the strongly‐held Community Dance Europe ethic of exchange, individual empowerment, growth and equality.

It started with implementing the process into the school’s schedule and preparing a suitable environment with dancefloor and equipment, instruments and so on. For the performance we organised lighting from different supporters (including the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and the American School). A technical support team of practical students was busy preparing the stage and lighting equipment, making benches for the audience and taking care of security.
The budget and time was quite tight for a professional performance but all challenges from transport and food to Saturday classes, advertising, networking with possible partner institutions got handled successfully. Lets hope performance and art stay a big part of the Ithuba Community College.

Thanks to Residance, Tanz die Toleranz and everybody involved!

Check out some links on the community dance team
http://www.tamaramclorg.com/
http://www.musicfordance.net/
http://www.peteayres.com/

photo credit Raabe and Hirtenfelder

Again the Bank of Austria came by with a group to put hands on. The fancy playground for the primary kids with siccors, swings, slide, climbing arch and sandpit form two courtyards enclosed through hills and will be the play centre for the younger kids.