Christian Calma, B.Arch ’24
Jon Adams Jerde Traveling Fellowship
This past summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Cape Town, South Africa, as part of my traveling fellowship. My proposal for my visit can be broken into two parts. The first centers on understanding the relationship between the city’s built environment and the country’s apartheid legacy. Understanding the apartheid regime’s history was pivotal to recognizing how the consequences of that time still shape Cape Town’s urban landscape, especially because the historical context underscores the deep-rooted inequalities that affect the everyday lives of
many people.
The second part looks to local architects and designers to see how they negotiate that
relationship with the buildings and spaces they design. And what better way to understand this than by engaging with them? I reached out to the School of Explorative Architecture to see if I could visit their studio and see the work they were doing. SEA, directed by Nic Coetzer (the author of Building Apartheid, one of the books I read as part of my research), is South Africa’s country’s first independent architecture school. It is also a relatively new school, having opened its doors three years ago and graduating its first cohort at the end of this year. Fortunately, my
time in Cape Town overlapped with the start of their semester, so not only did I get to shadow and participate in part of their studio, but I also got a few answers. This is a recount of those first three weeks.
One morning, as I prepared for what I thought would be a day full of museum visits, I got an email from Nic Coetzer, the director of SEA. A few days before, I sent him an email asking if I could visit the school as part of my fellowship research. His reply read:
If you can get to SEA before 09h00 this morning you can join on a field trip to Pniel on the bus, back at 5pm. Raincoat!
By this time it was about 8:25, so I immediately finished getting ready, ditched my initial plans, mapped out the route to SEA, and headed out. Fortunately, the school was only a ten-minute walk from where I was staying, though the windy weather hinted at rain later.
When I arrived, I met Professor Graeme Hurst who initially mistook me for a late student. He immediately tried to rush me on the students’ bus. However, once I clarified why I was there, he invited me to ride with him to Pniel, along with Professors Sarah Calburn and Lorenzo Nassimbeni. Once all the students were accounted for, we were on our way.
During the hour-long drive, the professors explained that the studio, titled “Techno Pastoralism,” is focused on the rural cultural landscapes in the Western Cape. The studio’s brief argues that studying rural areas is just as fundamental to the study of architecture as studying urban areas while asserting that the cultural landscapes are “enormously symbolic of [the country’s] history.” The rural areas of the Western Cape are undergoing rapid urbanization, driven by industries like education and tourism. And while these industries offer economic growth, the areas have
developed in less-than-ideal ways, as evidenced by the uncontrolled growth of informal settlements and the influx of seasonal and permanent migrants.
The site for the studio is the valley between Pniel and Languedoc, two towns in the Banhoek Valley surrounded by the Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Franschhoek Winelands. Pniel was established in 1843 as a mission for freed slaves after the British Empire abolished slavery in 1843. As freed slaves moved in, the town grew into an agricultural community with a central church that shaped the residents’ spiritual and social lives. Despite discriminatory policies and forced removals during Apartheid, the town retained most of its land thanks to the tight community anchored by the church’s influence. Today, Pniel is known for its proximity to famous wine routes and stunning mountain views, while most residents remain descendants of the original freed slaves.
Southeast of Pniel, across the Banhoek River, is the smaller town of Languedoc. It shares its name with the French province because, in 1694, the Dutch East India Company granted land in the valley to a Huguenot named Jean Imbert from that same province. But it was Cecil Rhodes who funded the construction of Languedoc to house Boschendal farm workers in 1901. Now, Languedoc consists of more than the original Worker’s Village. It includes the Apartheid-era Bungalow Terraces (known as NE 51/9 Calderwood), the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) Houses, and the Ithemba Labahlali informal settlement.
The development of this valley is evidence of one of the Cape’s earliest rural cultural
landscapes that gave rise to the Cape Tradition typology, making it clear that the area was and continues to be shaped by colonization and Apartheid. With influences from the Pniel church, the local commercial owners, the wineries and tourism spots, and the pressures to adjust to urban sprawl, this studio questions how architecture can reimagine the future of the people in this area by “developing the potential of the existing rich heritage, agricultural, and natural resources as a catalyst for the sensitive development of social and economic infrastructure across the Banhoek Valley.” In other words, the studio is asking students to negotiate the histories of Pniel and Languedoc through an urban proposal.
After arriving in Pniel, the students split into seven groups to document different areas of the valley, including the Pniel Werf, Pniel Street, Rhone Werf, Languedoc Worker’s Village, the Bungalow Terraces, the Post-Aparthied RDP Houses, and the Ithemba Labahlali informal settlement. I first joined the students documenting the RDP Housing projects. They were asked to gather the dimensions of one of the houses and the measurements of the surrounding area to produce elevation and section drawings. While some were doing that, I tagged along with a few
students tasked with interviewing the owner of an RDP. The owner, a woman in a pink sweater holding her baby in a yellow onesie, greeted us and welcomed us inside her house, apologizing for how cramped it was given there were five of us in there with her. In her kitchen, I noticed the walls were painted red and purple, colors she chose to help brighten the space. I looked above to see the exposed joists supporting the second floor, an optional addition to the RDP typology. Through the kitchen window, you could see informal houses made of corrugated metal, sticks, and tarps in the backyard.
As the students began the interview, they spoke in Afrikaans. Obviously, I didn’t understand what they were saying, and the owner must have seen that on my face. She turned to me to ask if understood, and when I said no, everyone started laughing. She graciously repeated what she had said, and answered the rest of the interview in English. The students asked her about her house, her daily routine, her family, the local community, and what she would like to see included in a proposal for the area. Her concerns included a better transportation system and a more accessible hospital nearby.
After the interview, I spoke with the mother separately to explain my being there. And as we talked, a pair of chickens wandered by, looking for scraps in the front yard. I asked her if the chickens belonged to her. She said no, explaining they belonged to one of the families in her backyard. Jokingly, I asked if that family ever shares the eggs with her, to which she said no and revealed that the families in the backyard do not like her because she inherited the RDP from her father-in-law who allowed the families to live there. Now that her name is on the deed, they
feel she doesn’t deserve to be given the house.
I thanked her for her time and rejoined the students. Graeme then offered to take me to another area. We drove through the neighborhood of RDP houses and arrived at Ithemba Labahlali, where more students were finishing another interview and their documentation of the area. Someone from the Dennis Moss Partnership, a local architectural practice in Stellenbosch, explained that the settlement is relatively new to the Languedoc area, as it emerged because of the pandemic. The land was originally earmarked for more RDP houses, though those plans never came to fruition.
After visiting the settlement, everyone gathered for lunch at the Rhone Werf, allowing us to escape the rain for a little. While there, the students completed a brief sketching exercise of the property, drawing either the main building’s elevations, the details of the facade, or the plan of the site. One student even gave me a paper to join them. After sketching briefly, I eventually found Nic and got a chance to properly introduce myself and reiterate what my fellowship was about. He graciously permitted me to come by the school whenever I wanted to. We ended up chatting for a bit, and I even shared what my thesis was about (if you know, you know).
Once the students finished the drawing exercise, we took the bus back to Languedoc for a tour of the different housing types led by Jeff Lackay, a director at the Dennis Moss Partnership whose specialty is in planning and design for lower-income settlements. Though we heard more about the RDP houses, the informal settlement, and the Bungalow Terraces, the rain made it almost impossible to continue walking. So, we headed back on the bus and returned to SEA to wrap up the day.
It’s worth noting that many view the RDPs as a failed government housing initiative. Many applicants are still waiting for homes as progress on building them has stalled. As a result, people in RDP houses rent out their backyard space for people to build homes to live in because it provides more of a sense of security, as seen in Languedoc.
The next few weeks focused on creating initial urban proposals for the valley, which would later be presented to the community members of Pniel and Languedoc for feedback. Before that, the students (myself included) participated in two workshops to better understand the key elements that make up the site. In the first, Professor Sarah Calburn led a collage-making workshop. The students used sketches and photos from the field trip to inspire collages of the natural (vegetation, topography, etc.) and built (roads, houses, etc.) environments. The exercise helped students register and process the existing features of Pniel and Languedoc through this form of abstraction.
The next day, Professor Lorenzo Nassimbeni led the second workshop. When I arrived, the students were reconfiguring the room to create three long tables and placing stacks of printer paper, trace paper, and charcoal sticks on each one. We divided into three groups and the professor explained this exercise would activate our experiential memories of the valley. We began by sketching the landscape, the architecture, and the infrastructure we remembered on separate sheets of trace paper. Then, we layered the sketches on the tables to create another type of collage. While everyone’s initial collages were all centralized on the tables, the professor
challenged us to extend the sketches along the table to mimic the Banhoek Valley’s length. Like the previous workshop, this one extends the conversation of thinking about the site two-dimensionally. The practice of layering these sketches highlighted the valley’s complexity as a built environment but also evoked the idea of a palimpsest, helping students refine their orientations and sensibilities of the valley’s layers, as evidenced by their representations of them.
We then shifted to thinking about potential interventions three-dimensionally. Using printer paper, the students created rudimentary forms- folded, crumpled, rolled, ripped, or even drawn onto- to represent potential ideas for new architectures. The students laid them out on the collages in a way that suggested potential urban schemes.
At the end of the workshop, one person in each group explained their group’s thought process behind their layouts. When we got to the last group, the professor asked me to interpret their work, which featured a thick and sinuous line of various shapes- tall towers, short stacks of ripped paper, small crumpled pieces resembling foliage- that cut through the valley. I noted that it suggests a central axis that follows the site’s topography with potential interventions like
stores, houses, and recreation centers positioned along it as a way to reinforce that urban gesture. When the professor asked how they could expand on this idea: I offered a few suggestions: thickening and thinning the axis to create varied spatial conditions, denoting secondary perpendicular axes to highlight to valley’s width, breaking up the monotonous form of the axis for variety, and defining key nodes on the axis for different programs.
This final part of the workshop helped shift students’ thinking from two-dimensional to three-dimensional concepts, showing them how abstract ideas can inspire architectural ideas. When talking to some students afterward, some said they found it difficult to think so abstractly, while others enjoyed the makeshift approach as it allowed the exploration of concepts with minimal constraints. Regardless, the decision to start the studio with these two exercises, rather than starting with drawing site analyses and collecting data, ties back to the idea of the palimpsest. The foundation of collaging and sketching frames their designs as more than just
buildings, but rather as elements contributing to the valley’s collective memory. Since maps and data can’t fully capture the essence of a place, drawings and collages can help bridge that disconnect.
With this groundwork established, the students were divided into three groups of about twenty-five, each with members from all three years and one from each of the seven original field trip groups. Each group assigned students to one of seven “planning areas,” including Topography, Geology and Climate, Vegetation & Hydrology, Historic Settlement, Zoning & Land Use, Placemaking & Massing, and Movement Routes. Students had to create an analysis drawing based on both the “planning area” they were assigned and the area of the valley they visited. For example, a student who visited the Pniel Werf would diagram the “Movement Routes” of that area. The students used the findings from their analysis to develop an urban proposal, which was drawn on a separate sheet.
Once everyone had done that, each person shared their analysis for feedback. I remember a student in my group focused on the “Vegetation & Hydrology” of Pniel, showing how the Banhoek River splits the towns and the landscape. Her initial proposal included a riverside promenade with stores and seating, though the professor encouraged her to rethink the promenade by activating the river even more. In her next iteration, she played with the river’s width, using thicker parts for gathering spaces and narrower sections for housing.
After refining their work, the group overlaid all the proposals to identify similarities and differences, ultimately consolidating all the ideas into a final scheme. After many discussions and decisions, the group collectively agreed on one and pivoted to preparing their presentation. On top of producing new drawings of their updated proposals, students had to make models that illustrated their urban schemes as part of the presentation. These would get placed on a 1:1000 contour model of the valley that some students made. But before presenting to the Pniel and Languedoc communities, the three groups first presented their ideas to guest critics at SEA
for additional feedback, allowing them to revise their finalize their designs.
On the day of the presentations, I arrived at the school about half an hour before the bus was set to leave. Once I arrived, the students were loading the 1:1000 site model onto the bus. The model was so big that it was comprised of six pieces, each one requiring at least two people to carry. During the ride back to Pniel, some students worked on finalizing their presentations while others took the opportunity to catch up on sleep.
The presentations took place in a community hall next to the Congregational Church in Pniel. Locals had already arranged the tables and chairs to make a large circle facing a screen and projector. The students continued preparing the room, including setting up their computers and bringing the site model into the center of the room. As residents of Pniel and Languedoc trickled in, Graeme welcomed everyone, thanked them for coming, and emphasized the importance of their contributions to the project. He briefly explained the project and introduced the three groups, encouraging feedback after each presentation.
Each group’s urban proposal shared a common goal of connecting and activating the valley. The first group prioritized fostering community through agricultural features found in both towns. They divided the valley into zones for farming, retail, and community hubs. Their proposal, which read as a comprehensive plan for the entire valley, included considerations for waste management and linking the area to the local wine tram to boost tourism.
The second group described the towns as the “lungs of the valley” that needed connection. Instead of redesigning the entire valley, they proposed a central line with four urban nodes between the towns. This gesture suggested more of a framework for future community-driven development, empowering locals to design the rest of the valley according to their discretion.
The final group used the words “community,” “engagement,” and “interconnectedness” to ground their proposal, offering a robust “green-belt space” that blends nature with economic development. Their plan included biking and hiking trails that connect to the rest of the valley, canoeing and water activities along the river, agricultural areas, cabins and tourist lodging, schools, and retail spaces.
After each presentation, both the students and the community gathered around the site model to discuss the proposal. Among the discussions, the locals of both Pniel and Languedoc shared the following suggestions:
- First and foremost, it is important to not develop anything that is outside the scope of
human dignity. It is important to prioritize the needs and desires of the existing
communities and their people - In both communities, young couples choose to move out instead of staying, particularly because there is no feasible housing. The designs should incorporate new housing for them, but it must be located and conceived with care. One of the groups proposed reimagining the existing informal settlement for new housing, though that place is still a site of both pain and exclusion.
- The safety of their children should also be prioritized, especially near roads with high traffic. Determining where to densify certain programs is important, especially since life and activity happen across the road as opposed to parallel to it.
- Both communities also face concerns about longevity and economic stability. How can the projects help with that using both internal and external resources?
- Tourism is a great economic generator for the community, though many see it as a
necessary evil. If they include these features to uplift the economic conditions, how can the design prioritize the needs of the community? - Along with introducing these new programs, consider how the economic opportunity will affect the lives of the people in the valley. For example, tourism is not year-round, so seasonal employment will become inherent to the valley. It’s important to mitigate this when incorporating those types of programs.
- Similarly, the valley is not always sunny with great weather, and the river’s level will
always fluctuate. Can the proposals anticipate and incorporate these seasonal changes into the design? - Additionally, use the broader landscape of the valley in the design. It’s their biggest
feature to draw tourists into the area! - And because the mountains and the landscape are inherent to the area, use that to help inform how you market the valley to tourists. Offer a uniquely African experience, as opposed to developing a narrative that attempts to emulate other cultures.
- If stuck, always return to the question of how the design will help unite the valley.
After the presentations, everyone broke for lunch. And while eating, the students were lastly tasked with interviewing the community members to get their opinions about the proposals, the current conditions of Languedoc and Pniel, as well as any other ideas they would like to see included. I sat in on one interview between a student and a lady from Languedoc. Similar to the interview I joined at the RDP house, there was a language barrier, so another student who spoke Afrikaans translated for them.
Once the interviews were completed, we thanked the community members and loaded up on the bus. But before returning to SEA, we took the rest of the afternoon to visit two wine estates. We first went to the Solms Delta Wine Estate to visit the Museum van de Caab. Housed in the original wine cellar that dates back to 1740, the Museum details the estate’s history, highlighting how Apartheid affected the Winelands and other rural areas in the Western Cape. Next, we visited the Boschendal Wine Estate. A professor walked us around explaining the estate’s architecture and gave us time to explore the gardens and museum. These visits not only provided a bit of context to the student’s projects but also gave them a chance to unwind after two weeks of hard work. And soon enough, we left the Winelands and headed back to the city.
Following the presentations for the Pniel and Languedoc communities, the students spent the next class consolidating all three schemes into one final urban scheme. Each student was then assigned a program and a plot of land that they would develop throughout the semester. As they began developing building massing models, their first three weeks of the semester culminated in a “First Thursdays” public exhibition. In Cape Town, the “First Thursday” (held on the first Thursday of every month, hence the name) is an evening in which art galleries open up as a way to showcase the city’s artistry and wealth of talent. For the exhibit, students made boards displaying their initial sketches and collages with their initial models. The exhibition also included the 1:1000 model and a new 1:5000 contour model highlighting the scale of the mountains surrounding the site. While many friends and families of the students came to see the work they’ve done over the past couple of weeks, it was here that I shared my thanks and wished everyone well for the rest of the semester.
While this journey began with visiting the Valley to understand the effects of colonization and apartheid in the rural landscapes of the Western Cape, the students and professors remained steadfast in architecture’s potential to connect communities and better their lived conditions. This duality- architecture as a tool to enable oppressive power structures and empower community-oriented development, turns the question back on the architect to consider the impact we have on others. And though there are many tools at our disposal to do this, one of the strongest means of calibrating our designs comes from engaging with these communities. This isn’t anything new; many practices already do this. But by giving these people the space to share their needs with us, we begin to engage with history differently. When we listen to how they endure these legacies and align our design sensibilities with their stories of discontent and resilience, history is no longer this top-down narrative of the past. Instead, through their testimonies, these communities co-author a new type of history infilled with their personal experiences. It results in this living narrative that reshapes our collective identity, laying the foundation for reimaging what the future can look like while fostering a larger dialogue that redefines both the past and the future.
