Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
contribution to make the creation of sustainable
settlements and buildings needed in the
future (Ozkan,2006, p. 108) as will be verified
in the case study of Centani: Greenshops
Financial Services Centre. Confirmed by
Sawyer, (1992, p. vii) past and present
indigenous knowledge does play a key role in
sustainability. It seems imperative then, that an
architectural perspective is created - in which
valuable indigenous knowledge is integrated
with equally valuable modern innovative
knowledge (shown in the case study of the
New Auditoria and Teaching Complex at the
Fort Hare University), therefore enabling the
development of settlements and buildings
that are both contemporary and modern,
yet which build upon the characteristics of
the local vernacular traditions and therefore
amalgamate within the cultural and ecological
context.
Indigenous knowledge and innovation is,
according to Hirji (2002, p. 313), ‘a system of
methods, customs and traditions developed
over many generations, through a traditional
way of life of an in-depth knowledge of a
system or systems by local people.
2.5. Apprenticeship:
Xhosa-specific population that live in it.
Architectural theory and practice, which
encompasses all the factors that surround
the art of building, is embedded within society
and is passed on from one generation to the
next by means of tradition and more often
apprenticeship. It is when these cycles of
transmission of information or technology
are broken by outside forces that apprentice
systems cease to be active (Ozkan, 2006, p.
108). Unfortunately, changes that ignore the
complex nature of social and environmental
forces, yield architecture which, since 1994
has been seen throughout the country in the
Reconstruction and Development Programme
(RDP).
Parallel to this, the changes since 1994 - when
South Africa became a democracy - have
been marked in recent years as individuals,
families and whole communities have left the
rural areas, and, often with no homes to go
to, migrated to the cities, resulting in various
informal settlements or squatter camps and
other social problems, alongside political
changes, resulting in militaristic ranks or lowcost
RDP housing schemes rarely taking into
account the culture in particular and seldom
reflecting the values of the indigenous people.
The maintenance of an apprenticeship
system, as was forged by Marchand (2006,
p.51), in which one is bound to another to
learn a trade that endows a community with
not only technical skills but a sense of social
identity and professional responsibility is the
most effective way to guarantee a sustainable
reproduction of a distinct architecture and
an urban landscape imbued with changing
and dynamic meaning for the Eastern Cape
In a country where the scarcity of energy
resources and synthetic materials is only likely
to increase, the determination to make use of
abundant local resources, the reintroduction of
an apprenticeship system along with the desire
to respect and engage with the complexities of
cultures, historical contexts, tradition and the
pressing needs of habitat, will most certainly
give rise to impressive, durable and socially
conscious architecture.
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