THESIS DEVELOPMENT

SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY PRECEDENTS

In the book Education, Architecture and Urbanism (Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios)

Jeremy Till refers to universities as three-legged stools as there are three main architectural demands that universities need to respond to. These three demands are the referred to the civic, the iconic and the social. 

The mixed-use campus I proposed would respond to these demands with a campus that would bring the education, commercial and community sectors together to work as one.

UPDATED THESIS PROPOSAL

BUILT ENVIRONMENT CAMPUS

THEMES

(Slight alteration from initial proposal)

Urban / Town Planning

Phasing

Education Nodes

Skills development / Community Involvement
Transport

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

(Same as initial proposal)

Facilities / Transport / Financial

APPROACH

(Same as initial proposal)

SITE

(Same as initial proposal)

LANSERIA

PROGRAMME

The building program that I will introduce is a mixed-use campus with the possibility of it becoming a tertiary education campus in the future as the area continues to develop. The mixed-use campus will comprise of a business or commercial sector, a tertiary educational sector and a community involvement and development sector. Each of these sectors will work together in the built environment to impact the surrounding areas and communities. 

The tertiary education facilities will help feed into the commercial sectors through employment while the employees in the commercial sector would be tutors or lecturers for the students and would also run short courses for the less fortunate people living the 
surrounding areas and the shacks in the area. 

NAIROBI TRIP

We as Unit 2 students were privileged enough to go on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya for a week to

I worked with David Spratt for this project and what we focused on were the levels of decision making and control that each specific person, whether a professional or a member of the community. Every person affected by the intervention or design should have a say in the matter but only to a certain extent. David and I disagreed with the approach that the designers took for the railway project. The way that we understood the process of decision making and design of the team was that they went to the member of the community and basically asked each one of them what their dream homes were and what features they wanted, for example a pool. Then they had to go back to the community and explain to them that they could not have specific things in there homes as the budget and space would not allow for that. 

David and I suggested that they should have given the community members specific options that they could have in their dream homes. There needed to be a certain level of control and decision making made at a higher level that would set boundaries for the lower levels of decision making.

Our project demonstrated that at the beginning there needs to be some sort of data collection in order to inform decision making. Then every level of decision making that happens in each level, there needs to be more data collection that is specific to the level at which decisions are being made. When making decisions there is a continuous cycle of influence and data collection across the different hierarchical levels.

INITIAL THESIS PROPOSAL

EDUCATION CAMPUS

THEMES

Urban / Town Planning

Phasing

Transport

Education Nodes

Sports /Skills development

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

Facilities / Transport / Financial

As our education systems continue to develop, there is a constant rise in the number of matriculants that acquire a university acceptance, yet there is a limit to the capacity of students that universities can accept due to the available facilities. Many students do not get the chance to attend a university due to the limited facilites of the institutions, lack of transport to be able to get to the institution and the financial implications of the institution.

APPROACH

Get statistics on:

South Africa

- the number of matriculants, the number of university applicants and the number of students that are accepted into tertiary educational institutes throughout the country. 

Gauteng

- the number of universities in Gauteng and the capacity of students that the university can take.

- the number of matriculants and the number of applications to universities.

- whether students move to res to be closer to the university that they are studying at.

- the distance that students travel to university and the time taken to get to the university.

Precedent study on tertiary education institutions in South Africa and internationally over a range of various sizes ranging from small/specialised institutions to large institutions that offer a range of educational facilities across a large scope of fields. I will also look at institutions that cater specifically for up coming sporting students to focus on their development with the sport.

SITE

LANSERIA

After mapping the locations of universities & tertiary education institutes, I will look at the area of Lanseria and do an in-depth analysis of the region and its context. I will look at the current infrastructure and the future development plans of the area and its infrastructure and determine whether or not it will be a suitable area for the proposal of a university or a smaller tertiary institution.