Architect and Builder Magazine South Africa May/June 2014 | Page 77
DYLAN WATKINS
UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG
Achieving sustainable built environments with low impacts on the natural
environment is becoming a universal goal. Energy usage in buildings is under the
spotlight. Waterwise projects are most likely to get the go-ahead. That is why an
indepth understanding of the environmental constraints and impacts of technologies
on architectural solutions is emerging as so important for students of architecture. It is the resolution of
environmental issues that can be expected to drive architectural expression that will shape tomorrow’s
buildings and the creation, extension and redevelopment of our towns and cities.
This year’s regional winner Dylan Watkins and his project Shaft #2 demonstrated that future architects
were embracing the sustainability agenda with environmental issues achieving equal status with
functionality and aesthetics.
Dylan Watkins has re-scripted the future of Johannesburg’s third landscape through architecture of the
‘Terrain Vague,’ a term for abandoned spaces or former industrial areas.
He identified Shaft #2, an isolated and historic site situated between two mine dumps on the southern
periphery of Johannesburg Central Business District, as one of these third landscape conditions.
Watkins said, “I propose that architecture is used as an instrument for remediation; more specifically,
of existing situations, scenarios and spaces in the built environment which are noticed but overlooked.”
This dissertation attempts to pioneer an architecture uniquely developed from the 3rd landscape. The
site, Shaft #2 is grounded within a large urban context, surrounded by existing urban systems. The aim is to
assimilate a hybrid architecture which integrates nature, people and architecture into a new urban ecology
to revitalise the site as a socio-ecological urban system where architecture is an interface for exchanges,
resulting in ecological observatories as the main architectural programme.
The architecture will not only aid in the process of re-script the 3rd landscape, but also become a
platform for exchange where knowledge can be obtained and shared through the tracing and recording
of the landscape and climate influence.
Student Awards
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