The Department of Architecture presents postgraduate research programmes in architecture, interior architecture, and landscape architecture in several inter-related fields of inquiry. Postgraduate students are expected to contribute to at least one of the following Research Programmes:
Urban Citizenship
Participatory architectural research and design as instrument of urban citizenship
Through participatory processes of research and design, the discourse of architecture is extended beyond the realm of architect-as-expert towards the dynamic collaboration required for spatial agency. Immersive ways of engagement enable deepened understanding of user needs and contextual variables, to expand the empathic horizon of the designer to internalise different perspectives and worldviews. The dynamic expression of space, informed by ritual, inhabitation patterns, interpersonal networked relationships, and the appropriation of space, becomes the focus over static architectural proposals. Fluid and temporal conditions of living inform design interventions that are often small in scale, yet big in their impact on the lives of a variety of communities. The scale spectrum implies a concern beyond individual interest alone towards an intentional engagement with the public consciousness of the collective. In this way, co-design as a process is embraced as an instrument of urban citizenship, responsive to the complex emergence of African Urbanism.
Contact: Prof Carin Combrinck; Jason Oberholster
Climate-resilient Urban Environments
Future-proofing cities through climate change adaptation and systems transformation
Climate change is a major disruptor in our built environment driving several cumulative, cascading and concurrent impacts that adversely affect communities. In response, this research group is exploring integrated, multi-disciplinary, built environment-related strategies that are locally appropriate and responsive to the African urban context and its growing climate change vulnerabilities. The research topics aim to drive climate change mitigation, enable climate change adaptation, and address climate change justice. The themes considered in this group include food security, heat stress adaptation, flood risk mitigation, biodiversity loss, ecosystem services integration, good health and well-being and sustainable cities and communities. These themes align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for the region.
Contact: Dr Jan Hugo; Dr Karen Botes; Prof Chrisna du Plessis
Designed Ecologies
Fostering the human-nature relationship through social and ecological pathways
This field is about how we design ecological and cultural landscapes, which include multifunctional green infrastructure to help combat challenges of biodiversity loss, climate adaptation and food security. Several research projects exist in the field, using quantitative and qualitative approaches within inter- and transdisciplinary teams. This includes design experiments that test novel planting schemes, design prototypes and technologies to enhance urban biodiversity and livelihoods; the refugia abilities of planting palettes; biocultural diversity and relationships with nature; place perception and place identity; environmental justice perspectives; climate change adaptation; and the food security potential of indigenous species in vertical planting systems.
Contact: Prof Ida Breed; Dr Dayle Shand; Dr Karen Botes
Laboratory for the 6IR
Designing a thriving future world
The question of what world we will leave for our grandchildren compels a fundamental rethinking of our extractive industrial trajectory and its erosion of ecological and social systems. As technological development accelerates toward the autonomous and artificial, the Sixth Industrial Revolution marks a cultural pivot: reimagining the relationship between technology, humanity, and the living world by recognising the generative intelligence of life itself. In this paradigm, nature becomes collaborator rather than constraint, guiding a shift from extraction to regeneration, control to participation, and isolation to symbiosis. The Laboratory for the 6IR advances this transformed industrial logic by developing circular, adaptive, bio-based, and ecologically entangled approaches that position industry as a force for life-system health and restoration. We envision futures where technology and human endeavours are ecologically embedded, industry nourishes rather than depletes, and innovation deepens our connectedness to Earth’s systems.
Contact: Prof Chrisna du Plessis; Dr Calayde Davey
Sustainable Heritage
The recording and analysis of, and prospects for, architecture
This research field positions architectural design in a historical continuum of international (and local) theory, practice, and traditions. Researchers in this field are interested in the relationship between people, landscape, and artefacts of cultural significance and heritage value. Researchers collect, record, and analyse information about cultural artefacts and create prospects for architecture, informed by current best practice, as well as legal and heritage frameworks. Current research activities build on over 75 years of Departmental heritage and cultural research and publication. The Department's thriving Architectural Archive, which has generated several research outputs, presents prospective researchers with a wealth of unexploited artefacts and data on South African architectural heritage.
Contact: Dr Johan Prinsloo
Inhabitation of Place
Identity and meaning-making through space
Human identity, place and context shape how people inhabit and assign meaning to spaces. This research area adopts a human‑centred, transdisciplinary approach to examine how spatial design fosters dignity, belonging and well‑being through embodied human–building interactions. It explores how cultural, economic, psychological and social systems shape spatial experience, guiding empathy‑driven and inclusive design strategies that prioritise accessibility, diversity and equitable participation. By investigating how spaces and spatial practice promote comfort, safety, sensory nourishment and emotional resilience it addresses challenges such as universal design and spatial and epistemic justice. Grounded in users’ lived experiences, it reveals how everyday behaviours, rituals and identities inform the creation of environments that support human flourishing.
Contact: Dr Nico Botes
Architectural Education
Challenging established and conventional praxis in architectural education
Architecture, as a spatial and design discipline, in turn engages with those aspects of education, practice and research. This research focus area is situated in the context of Africa and the Global South and pertains to the scholarly enquiry about spatial design education using a wide lens that includes the explorations of the interrelationships between, and within, education, practice and research and how these relate to, draw on and critically respond to a multitude of informants, including multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary influences across a broad spectrum of interests, in the midst of a rapidly expanding production of knowledge in the 21st century. Researchers in this field should ideally – but not exclusively – consider, reflect on, and challenge established and conventional praxis and outcomes in spatial design pedagogy with its densely layered processes and diversity of outcomes.
Contact: Dr Nico Botes
Regenerative and Resilient Places and Spaces
Transforming urban places and spaces through regenerative and resilient design
This research area focuses on regenerative public space, neighbourhoods and regions, exploring how they can support thriving and resilient communities. Responding to the significant challenges and uncertain futures facing many cities, it investigates how resilience thinking and regenerative development and design can address ineffective planning approaches and spatial inequities while unlocking the regenerative potential inherent in urban environments. The research develops frameworks that emphasise spatial conditions and their transformation, examining how the organisation of urban structural elements, guided by key spatial determinants and characteristics of healthy urban systems, can build adaptive capacity and enable regenerative transformation across scales and contexts over time. This theme is shared with the Department of Town & Regional Planning
Contact: Prof Chrisna du Plessis; Dr Jan Hugo; Dr Dayle Shand