Project Location: Johannesburg

Project Focus Area: Urban Infrastructure & Inequality 

Supervisor: Paul Devenish 

Co-Supervisor: Tariq Toffa

Project Description: 

Due to expanding cities and rapid urbanisation, many urban spaces are scarred with brown field sites from the industrial era. These sites are often abandoned, polluted and act as idle zones in the urban context preventing urban connectivity, recognition of industrial heritage, effective land use and healthy ecosystems. It is critical to bridge the divide between urban and natural systems to ensure the prosperity of future cities and generations. Therefore, this project looks at how architecture can act as a regenerative device between a brown field site and the natural environment to inaugurate socioeconomic value on a macro, meso and micro scale. The site explores a dialogue between the surrounding urban systems and the site's natural systems through an eco-learning urban environment. The site vision builds onto the adjacent university’s spatial development frameworks and local architect’s proposed urban frameworks by connecting the adjacent universities, surrounding student residences and Empire Road movement through pedestrian corridors. This is a proposed research site between the University of Johannesburg, the University of Witwatersrand and the Council of Industrial Research (CSIR) in which students, researchers and lecturers involved in environmental restoration can use the site to conduct research on Phytoremediation processes. This is to not only restore the site itself but to create a space for Phytoremediation research for the Johannesburg mining belt as well, as this is a new, natural, on-site cleaning process being explored in South Africa to restore polluted industrial land. The site’s ground floor is an interactive eco-learning environment for the public and upper floors house the semi-private laboratory spaces. When a user passes through the site, they come into contact with and are educated about the natural on site cleaning processes (constructed wetlands and mixes of planting). Through the use of the site's recycled materials, existing buildings, incorporation of the natural environment and circular green economy thinking, a regenerative design where man and nature coexist mutually is achieved through recognizing the living system potential of existing components of the built environment.