KZN winner of architectural competition announced

"These annual awards aim to promote and reward design excellence amongst students whilst encouraging a broadening in understanding of the environmental issues and their resolution. Through discourse around thesis projects design paradigms are inevitably challenged and new design ideas evolve giving depth to architectural resolution while building technical skills sets required by architects of the future," Ingram said.

Multi-purpose trade hub

Mongezi Ncube won the first prize worth R8,000 while Craig Cullen was awarded second prize of R6,000. "These talented students who have received prizes have demonstrated that they have taken on board their far-reaching responsibilities and have excelled themselves in their design projects," Ingram said.

Ncube's design is a multi-purpose trade hub that provided appropriate and meaningful infrastructure for the people of Warwick, Durban. The building's primary function is to act as a support structure for informal traders that need productive space to facilitate their informal trade.

The building is configured in such a way that almost any form of informal trade can be facilitated in the building directly from the street. The aim of this design was to provide a built environment that occupants could define in its configuration by letting them make crucial decision of how they want their built environment to be defined.

Public transport terminal

Second placed Cullen proposed a multi-modal public transport terminal. In his thesis he used connection modelling as a mechanism for addressing social inequality in Durban's peri-urban built environment. He says that whilst much has been done to try to address the old apartheid urban planning divisions, there is still social inequality and tension that exists on the thresholds of where many informal settlements meet the more upmarket residential areas.

"Architectural students need to be aware of how easy it is to achieve sustainable and energy efficient architecture with clay brick and of course the new technologies that are being continuously developed and able to mitigate the impacts of built structures on the environment so that these can be incorporated seamlessly into their designs going forward," Ingram said.

The national winner, to be chosen from the eight regional winners, will be announced and presented with a certificate and cheque for R50,000 at the 27th National Architectural Student awards function in Johannesburg in April 2014.