FCT @ AZA2012
We bring you coverage from the Architecture ZA 2012 Biennial Festival conference and side events, on social media and at our website. It is being held at Cape Town City Hall, from Thursday, 13 September to Sunday, 16 September, with hundreds of architects, and students expected to attend. ‘Rescripting Architecture’ is the theme for this year’s event and the festival runs in conjunction with the annual Student Architect Festival.
The Architecture ZA Biennial Festival is a veritable think-tank of international and local speakers, debates, master classes, exhibitions, a film festival and city tours, to be held at Cape Town City Hall, from Thursday, 13 September to Sunday, 16 September.
‘Rescripting Architecture’ is this year’s theme and is a considered response to challenging times and a world increasingly in flux, with rapidly changing global economies, environments, and political situations, according to Festival Convener Daniel van der Merwe.
The festival runs in conjunction with the annual Student Architect Festival, and also serves as the setting for the announcement of the awarded projects of the biennial SAIA Corobrik Awards of Merit and for Excellence, the ‘Oscars’ of the architecture industry. AZA 2012 also kicks off the official Creative Week Cape Town and is an important event leading up to World Design Capital 2014.
All AZA 2012 speakers and presenters are innovative thinkers as well as architectural achievers. The roster includes UK-based, Tanzanian-born David Adjaye, whose practice was commissioned to design the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington D.C; Rahul Mehrotra, an Indian architect and urban designer who is currently leading the Master Plan for the Taj Mahal and surroundings; Ora Joubert, the multiple award-winning architect and convener of a seminal reference book on architecture in democratic South Africa, Andrew Makin of Durban-based architectural firm OMM Design Workshop and Thorsten Deckler, co-founder of 26’10 Architects in Johannesburg, which has recently been chosen as the best emerging practise from South Africa in the 2012 biannual round-up of top emerging practises in the world.
Posts
Welcome to our Month of Design #MOD12
An interview with architect Anya van der Merwe
Cape Town has ideas for the future of the Cape Flats
New masterplan for Clocktower Precint in place
FCT @ AZA 2012: Day One of Architecture ZA 2012
A running start to the AZA2012 Biennale’s first day. We were exposed to a smorgasbord of architectural perspectives on the spaces we could make, the ones we have made (for better or worse) and the ones that never were.
FCT @ AZA 2012: Day Two of Architecture ZA 2012
Day Two was fact-intensive, but culminated in a truly memorable engagement with a new voice in Architecture for the Global South, Rahul Mehrotra. With large grounds of work covered today, many students and practitioners alike will undoubtedly be left with much to ponder as they rest after a hard day of learning.
FCT @ AZA 2012: Day Three of Architecture ZA 2012 – Part 1 by Robert Bowen
Sean Rodrigues’s talk on net zero strat, World Design Capital 2014 reminder of value by Lianne Burton and then Atelier Bow Wow on mainly Metabolism Void and some of their works.
FCT @ AZA 2012: Day Three of Architecture ZA 2012 – Part 2 by Brett Petzer
Brett Petzer attended David Adjaye’s presentation at Architecture ZA 2012 with hopes set to maximum after Rahul Mehrotra’s bewitching discourse of the day before. Our impressions? A distinctly mixed bag.