2 November 2022 | Roelof Uytenbogaardt 7th UDISA Memorial Lecture
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A very inspiring and insightful lecture from a pioneering South African Architect | Martin Kruger
Notes of my two cents from the reading all whilst trying to consume the knowledge being shared by Martin Kruger - not an easy feat...
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Urban Design Tennants:
1 - Architecture and the City is a single construct
• Figure ground & Land use to be mingled and interwoven to establish complexities within a city
• Design a city like you would design a house
• Always link the fragment with the foot
2 - Respect for the footprints of the past
• The past is like rivers and routes we need to protect
• House is City & City is House - tree and leaf analogy
• Strip the old and scar with the new - layeredness
3 - Drawings are the alphabet that informs the design
• Drawing gives the intellectual capacity to create the design, it is the music and literature of the design
• Method of communication
4 - The diagram is the essence of the concept
• Diagrams are little poems that combine a full story
• Possibilities are explored individually, but as a greater whole
• Golden thread - the initial idea will inform the final approach, regardless!
5 - The public institutions of the city
• We create our building/city, they create us
• Urban glossary: dynamic organism, layering, generosity, identity, legibility, manners etc...
• In terms of building design - visual and interactive public fronts
6 - Vernacular preserves spirit of place/memories
• External room
• Building becomes extension of the landscape/urban fragment
7 - Typologies of permanence and the temporality in urban formations
• What kind of object is the work of architecture?
• Individual house is temporary, but housing is permanent
• Monuments are permanent
• Typologies - Bo-Kaap stoep. Street and sidewalk become the binding element
• The urban wall - balconies, interaction with passerby
8 - Architecture is another form of nature
• Bricks are the floor
• We use the stones and timber to make a city
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