Study course Cape Town: Five architectural views and proposals for Cape Town

This book contains five views and architectural proposals for Cape Town, South Africa. The design project is a 3rd year project (P5) at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Two lecturers and five students visited Cape Town in 2014, The metropolitan region of Cape Town has grown rampant for decades. Work areas, suburbs for the (growing) middle and upper class and townships. The city gradually lost control over its urban development and a large group even lives in informal settlements. Parallel to our project, a number of Dutch worked together under the flag of ‘Density Syndicate’. Initiated and organised by INTI and ACC as a contribution to the program Cape Town World Design Capital 2014, with the aim to regain control over the urban development of the metropolitan region. Compact urbanisation could be an answer to unplanned sprawl of the surrounding open landscape and strengthen the interdependence of living, working and amenities. Like the professionals collaborating in Density Syndicate the student group looked for strategies to revitalise the city, both on a socioeconomic as well as a spatial level. To give the inhabitants of Cape Town, particularly from lower income groups, perspective on (a basic) income. Reducing the physical distance between living and working is one of those strategies. The assignment for the students was to come up with a strategy and a design proposal for a specific location of their own choice. The students had to define their own project by doing research on the city, it’s culture and the challenges and urgent topics. Their design proposal had to prove being an relevant addition to the city, both in terms of socio-economic and spatial issues. Five architectural proposals: Re-inventing Apartheid City by Hein Coumou; Social Housing + Khayelitsha by Dennis Meijerink; Skills Centre Cape Town by Tjeerd Beemsterboer; The next life of the Athlone stadium by Maik Peters; Wine & Vegetable Market Grand Parade by Thom Zijlstra Lecturers: Jeroen Mensink, Gert Breuge