Staff Profile 

PhD (UP), MTech Hort. Cum laude (TUT) 

Researcher, Lecturer

Contact no: +27 (0)12 420 2128

Email: [email protected]

Office: 3-5 Boukunde Building

Bio 

Karen Botes is a landscape architect and lecturer who joined the Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria (UP) in 2019 after founding and successfully managing a micro-enterprise in Gauteng for 20 years. She completed her master's degree in Horticulture in 2007 and was awarded a doctoral degree in 2024. 

During her years in practice, Karen received two awards of excellence from the South African Landscapers Institute (SALI) and one from the Institute for Landscape Architecture in South Africa (ILASA). 

In 2020, she received the Department of Architecture and EBIT Faculty Teaching and Learning awards. Her research focus is sustainable food security through edible green infrastructure with African vegetables. She won the 2022 World Building Council's abstract competition in Melbourne with her abstract titled: "Traditional African Vegetables in Modular Living Walls: A Novel Approach Towards Smart Cities" and  First Place in the 2024 World Technology Partners Green Sustainability Trends: Organic Architecture. 

Karen is a Unit for Urban Citizenship (UUC) and ILASA Gauteng branch committee member and has served as a regional judge for the SALI Gauteng branch since 2015.

Course involvement and teaching philosophy

Karen believes students are inspired to learn best by adding real-life experiences to their theory through positive education pedagogy. Her teaching practice, therefore, aims to develop a positive learning environment through real-life community projects. These projects motivate students to develop a cognitive knowledge of their field and become capable and skilled professionals with integrity and an awareness of their responsibility towards our planet and its valuable resources. 

Karen teaches Earth Studies (AAL310) to undergraduate students. In the honours course, she is involved in the design studio (RFP) and supervises students in Research Field Studies (RFS701). She also supervises students in the masters course (DIT802) and is involved in their Design Project Development (DPD802) studio. She coordinates units 2 and 4 for Continuing Practice Development (CPD810) for the master's course.

Research profile

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8227-8716

Department Research Focus Areas: Designed Ecologies

Research interests: 

Karen's primary focus is urban small-scale food production involving outdoor modular living wall systems and leafy African vegetables as resilient space-saving solutions in compact urban environments and an alternative to conventional soil-based agriculture. She is also exploring the contribution of edible green infrastructure, focusing on rooftop gardens and other edible green infrastructure with African vegetables to address poverty, food security, human well-being, sustainable cities, responsible consumption and production and climate action. Currently, she is looking at South African communities' experiences and viewpoints on the opportunities and challenges of growing African vegetables in living walls for food production as an alternative to mainstream crops. 

Research projects

Living walls with Traditional African Vegetables for food security. This project aims to test Traditional African Vegetables (TAV) that have potential for food production and cultivation in exterior living walls. This project is funded by Innovation Africa and the UP UCDP programme.

African Food crops in living wall systems. The objective was to analyse and define student learning through virtually engaging with a real-life project and cross-disciplinary collaboration (landscape architecture, landscape technology and horticulture).

Recent publications

Botes, K. 2024. Living walls: Upscaling their performance as green infrastructure. Acta Structilia, 31(1), pp. 43-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.38140/as.v31i1.7942.

Botes, K.L & Breed, C.A. 2022. Traditional African vegetables in modular living walls: A novel approach towards smart cities. In: World Building Congress 2022: Building our Future: Informing practice to enhance the lives of current and future generations. 27 – 30 June. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 2022 Vol. 1101 (2) 022051. Doi: 10.1088/1755-1315/1101/2/.

Botes, K.L. & Breed, C.A. 2021. Outdoor living wall systems in a developing economy: A prospect for supplementary urban food production? Acta Structilia, 28(2), pp. 143-169. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/24150487/as28i2.6.

Botes K., Botha A.J.M. 2021. Experiential E-Learning: A Creative Prospect for Education in the Built Environment? In: Zhou W., Mu Y. (eds) Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2021. ICWL 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13103. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90785-3_9

Students supervised

PhD Students 

Omobolanle, James. 2024. 

Title: tbc

ML(Prof) students supervised:

Louw, Anrea. 2024. Exploring Opportunities and Challenges in Cultivating Traditional African Crops for Sustainable Urban Agriculture: Insights from the Melusi Underprivileged Community. MLArch (Prof) dissertation. University of Pretoria. Pretoria. 

Seeliger, James. 2023. The Role of Traditional Leafy Vegetables in
Informal Settlements and Spatial Planning. MLArch (Prof) dissertation. University of Pretoria. Pretoria. 

Viljoen, Anmari. 2024. Investigating what role Traditional African Vegetables in Urban Agriculture can play through utilising Green Infrastructure. MLArch (Prof) dissertation. University of Pretoria. Pretoria.

ML(Prof) students co-supervised:

Mbazimba, Sizwe. 2023. Designing a sensory garden for the visually impaired. Master of Applied Science (Landscape Technology). Tshwane University of Technology. Pretoria.