RESOURCE PRODUCED BY CSIR BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY & CSIR ROADS AND TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY
RESOURCE PRODUCED BY CSIR BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY & CSIR ROADS AND TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY |
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Improving transport accessibility for people with disabilities A cost-benefit approach to the identification of well-located land for low-income housing developmentWater services: is franchising feasible? Improvement of the aggregate interlock equation used in the cncPave software package Building quality index for houses CSIR's fire investigation team in demand SB'04 Africa - Regional Conference on Building and Construction Sustainable building workshops CSIR's Dr Sharon Biermann nominated for prestigious national award E N Q U I R I E S |
The conference was bookended by two technical tours. The first was a tour of the award- winning Lynedoch building, home of the Spier Sustainability Institute and Lynedoch School, and hub of the proposed Lynedoch eco-village development. Saturday morning brought cloudy skies and drizzle and many a delegate wondered what the rest of the day would have in stall. Despite the gloomy weather the bus arrived on time and everyone embarked on their mission to visit a number of sustainable building projects in the Cape Metropolitan Area. The first stop was in Lwandle, close to Gordon's Bay, south of the N2. The group of eager practitioners (mostly architects armed with cameras and great enthusiasm) visited the Lwandle Hostels-to-Homes project, which included the upgrade of 42 hostel barracks to 960 individual rental units. The project delivered affordable solar water heating, family and single dwelling units, a variety of community facilities and spaces, all built by local sub-contractors and labour trained on the project. The tour group was accompanied by a large number of the young inhabitants (children of various sizes) who posed for photographs in front of their new homes. From Lwandle the bus drove to Kuyasa, Khayelitsha, where the tour group visited Mama Elsie in her retrofitted RDP house with a solar water heater, energy-efficient lighting and insulated ceilings. This pilot project included ten RDP houses and is part of a partnership initiative between the City Council of Cape Town and the South South North. Criteria used to select the ten beneficiaries included elderly people, people with disabilities and single parents. The next project was located in Mitchell's Plain. The rain stopped just long enough to allow the tour group to take a few photographs of the compressed earth-block building for the Alliance Francaise and gather inside the hall, where the architects discussed the building process, including the production of the earth-blocks and the treatment of the Eucalyptus poles for the roof beams. Both of these represented very innovative building techniques at that time. This community facility is one of the largest buildings in South Africa built with compressed earth brick technology. Leaving the building in Mitchell's Plain, the bus travelled along the coastline bordering False Bay to Muizenberg and further inland to the Westlake Office Park. At the foot of the majestic mountains lay a green office building tucked away between other more conventional buildings. The Westlake office building was built as a future normal 900m2 commercial green office building with no grant funding. The designers used recycled, non-toxic, local materials and made use of local contractors and labourers. It has excellent passive solar design and is a resource and energy-efficient building. The building does not only provide an aesthetically pleasing interior and exterior, but also comfortable and functional workspaces that can compete with any conventional upmarket office building. The harmony between the building and the landscape (site around the building) also bear witness to good sustainable practices. Vegetation selected for the site had to be either indigenous, for medicinal purposes or for food. The final stop was at the residence of the Linge family, a passionate engineer and his artist wife who started to incorporate more sustainable building materials and old building techniques in their house in Noordhoek. Our kind hosts described their wish to have a dome in the dining room and their search for an architect who could design and build such an imposing structure. Fortunately their paths crossed that of architect Andy Horn, who became the designer and builder of the dome. Four supporting arches were constructed (with supporting scaffolding), after which the dome was built without any additional support, using old, tested methods that were revived by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. They also used non-toxic paint for the dining room walls. After a long day of viewing great buildings and finding new inspiration, tired participants returned to Spier to contemplate their own responses to sustainable building in the future. Enquiries:
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