Southbank Intl. Competition, South Africa for Uli Tischler – Martin Mechs Architects, 2nd Price [2006]
‘The competition called on architects and designers to define and apply new spatial approaches in order to create a community that will serve as a model for sustainable living elsewhere on the continent and beyond. At the core of the competition were universally relevant questions: in a globalizing world, how can new spaces come into being that simultaneously acknowledge the creativity of its inhabitants, the abundance and fragility of its natural settings, and the dynamics of urban growth?
The Southbank was an open, two-stage competition that aimed to produce visualisations of a new community for 2000-3000 people, in which residential accommodation merges with internationally significant facilities for arts production and performance, in a setting defined by ecological conservation.‘ [Competition‘s call 2006]
The proposed project points at the segregation in Apartheid’s South Africa, yet with a totally different target: The graphically dominant stripes of the project’s masterplan does not represent the separation of different people and uses, but an openness to the variety of ways of living of the inhabitants. The dwelling offers several models of housing with different densities and building typologies, in order to enhance the mix and combination of the various functions, fabrics, buildings and people.
The concept of a community based living in the proposed project should strengthen the inhabitant’s responsibility for the residential fabric and its many open green spaces. The start up for the plant would be the ‘great garden campaign’, which defines already at the very beginning the grid of the future fabric.
Team [first stage]: Martin Mechs, Uli Tischler, Felicitas Konecny, Wolfgang Isopp, Christina Kimmerle