Architechtural Student of the Year Awards announced

Corobrik had seen many changes in architectural expression and anticipated that the growing consciousness and responsibility towards addressing the environmental imperatives will lead to architecture being increasingly grounded in the environmental resolution and that this will manifest itself more evidently in design.

This was the message from Gary Westwood, Corobrik's regional sales manager in the Free State, during the Architectural Student of the Year Awards which was recently held in Cape Town.

Jurie Swart with his project Borderline - mediated landscape: A Water Research Centre for the University of the Free State (QwaQwa Campus) was this year's regional winner. Runners up were Marko Pretorius and Ian Cox while winner of the prize for best use of clay masonry was awarded to Martin Potgieter. Each regional winner is entered into the national finals in March 2012 where the winner will receive R50 000.

"Achieving sustainable built environments with low impacts on the natural environment is becoming a universal goal. That's why an in-depth understanding of the environmental constraints and impacts of technologies on architectural solutions is emerging so important for students of architecture," Westwood said.

Students are pushing the boundaries

"Tomorrow's leading architects will therefore not be just great designers but will be well-rounded in the technologies for achieving sustainable architecture. We have been witnessing the movement towards this in the students' thesis projects in recent years and this years projects suggest students of architecture are increasingly up to speed and pushing the boundaries of design," he added.

"By exploring nature's design and introducing biomimicry the obvious clues in nature can be applied to architecture which will ultimately result in the creation of a hybrid building; a building self-sustaining and adaptive to its surroundings," award-winner Swart commented.

"This dissertation explores whether nature and architecture can amalgamate to become a hybrid solution in a vast landscape which has lost its reference to place and time. The theoretical investigation strives to create an architectural typology that presents harmony between chaos and order, expressing the poetic quality of construction."