develop the brief and building design through cocreation and co-design with the d-school and UCT stakeholders . Thus began a 4-year synergistic journey where design thinking and architectural design paired to make the HPI d-school Afrika .
Competition & Brief The commission for the building was awarded through an invited competition in October 2018 . While a site had been selected and the overarching aspirations for the building where clear , the brief was incredibly open , including how big the building needed to be and what should be accommodated in it . Rather than submit a design concept that would invariably miss the mark , KMH Architects proposed a collaborative design process , to
Key Concepts Following visits to Stanford and Potsdam d-schools to meet with the leadership of these two facilities and to observe the teaching programmes and how the spaces in the respective facilities were utilised , the detailed brief and approach to site was synthesised through a series of co-creation workshops . Key concepts included :
• The building should integrate with the contextual fabric of the university but also externally reflect its unique function and distinctive teaching platform .
• The building should communicate a feeling that it is a different learning experience within an environment to test , fail , think and act differently .
• Students should see collaboration and comaking happening in flexible and configurable teaching and learning spaces .
• The building should support communal working , co-creation , the use of vertical surfaces , outside teaching activities and gatherings . Teaching design thinking is both collaborative , with people working together , and reflective – Me and We spaces . Importantly , democratic common space was also required to open up to , and welcome in , the broader university community – Us space . The Us space coalesced into the concept of a centralised roofed town square , where
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