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Architects: KMH Architects
- Area: 5500 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Paris Brummer
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Manufacturers: Aluplan, Façade Projects, First Africa Holdings, Gabions, Marble Classic, Mazor, Tightfit
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Lead Architect: Jonathan Ray
Text description provided by the architects. The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika, at UCT, is the 3rd Design Thinking institute in the world and the only school in Africa dedicated to Design Thinking training. The school’s objective is to train individuals in the practice of design thinking as an enabler of innovation and new outcomes to meet users’ needs in complex socio‐political and economic contexts.
KMH’s initial pitch to the university was to collaborate with them to co-create a brief and design concept for the new d-school. With the HPI d-school Afrika as the end-user client, we found that design thinking principles were essentially baked into the process right from the start. It fundamentally required the client team to join the architectural team, which together followed the design thinking process to formulate the brief and even the initial design concept and massing ideas for the building. And so began a 4-year journey to make the HPI d-school Afrika.
Key concepts included sustainability, integration with the contextual fabric of UCT while also signifying a unique function, spaces, and materiality that communicate a different kind of learning environment, seeing collaboration and co‐making happening, and for the building to achieve a GBCSA 6 Star Public & Education Building certification.
Maximum spatial flexibility was required to easily re-purpose spaces in the future as the school’s programs evolve. To achieve this, fixed structural elements and services form a spine along the southern edge, allowing for a large span of orthogonal space along the northern and western sides. This planning approach pushes all the geometrical complexity of the site into the center of the triangle, the “Us” space. Each studio can be used independently or opened to the central space. Unless the blinds are drawn, the activity in the studios is visible to those in the central space, maximizing engagement. Studios are large, rectangular spaces with flat floors and all furniture on wheels.
An exposed cable tray grid carries all electrical & electronic services, including pull-down power cables, allowing for maximum floorplate flexibility. The structural cores, which contain vertical circulation, bathrooms, kitchens, service risers, and shear elements, form a spine along the southern edge of the building. Staff space is located along the main entrance route with shared break-out spaces to maximize connections between staff and students. “Me” spaces are provided at either end of the building. These are the spaces for ideation, reflection and recovery. They celebrate views and visually connect to the landscaping surrounding the building. “We” spaces take the form of teaching and learning studios. “Us” space takes the form of a centralized roofed “town square” encompassing an atrium and courtyard.
Targeting a GBCSA 6 Star rating required the team to push design innovation in ways that will contribute to the greater environmental sustainability outcomes inherent in targeting the highest-level rating. The d-school integrates with UCT’s goal of being a living laboratory where students and faculty can interact with real-life examples in their fields – in this case, a building designed and built through collaboration, with sustainability and innovation at its core.
