UFS student wins Corobrik Regional Architecture Award

Stephen Diedericks is pictured with a model of his winning thesis entitled "An interminable living machine".

In addition to the cash prize, the regional competition winners are through to the finals of the National Architectural Student of the year Award – set to be announced in Johannesburg in May 2020 – which comes with R70,000 in prize-money.

Diedericks’ dissertation is entitled "An interminable living machine". The dissertation explores and addresses the re-appropriation of the vacant Mangaung Intermodal Transport Facility (MITF), into a living, micro enterprise factory of change. Reintegration of MITF, otherwise known as the Bloemfontein Taxi Terminal, with its immediate urban context is a fundamental requirement to ensure that the intervention links back into the urban context, thus humanising it.

Stephan Diedericks pictured with (left) Professor Jonathan Noble, HOD at the University of the Free State and (right) Gareth Pillay of Corobrik.

The site was once home to Bloemfontein’s first power station. It is this concept of power generation that leads to the client (catalyst) that acts as an “economic power generator” by enabling microenterprise development within the re-appropriated building. Several subsystems, including aquaponics and SMME (small, medium and micro enterprise) training, feed off the main catalyst and in turn provide resources in the form of food and business training to ground floor users and micro enterprise users to latch onto over many decades of growth.

"A building that recycles itself and reuses these elements elsewhere for traders and business owners. A building that filters water through biofilters creating a living building with people that act as the sustainable, ceaseless energy source that creates an interminable system of change and economic growth in Bloemfontein and the Free State. A living machine."