Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
vernacular architecture to teach lessons that
are relevant to the future, a more problemorientated,
comparative and integrative stage
that leads to explanatory theory needs to be
entered.
The New Auditoria and Teaching Complex
at the University of Fort Hare has become
a precedent from which much may be
birthed, traditions have allowed for creativity,
innovation, and change; building traditions
continue to evolve and transform while new
ones will arguably keep emerging. Though
such new “grassroots traditions” may not be as
established as that of local earth construction,
it may well represent the future of the
sustainable and vernacular in industrialized
urban societies.
The patterns and principles of good practice
from both the Greenshops Financial Services
Centre and the New Auditoria and Teaching
Complex at the University of Fort Hare were
identified to sustain the human settlements
for which they were designed. Building design
and construction together with the layout of
the buildings were explicitly account for: water
cycles that collect and reuse rain water and grey
water in buildings and adjoining open spaces;
natural ventilation in contrast to mechanical
systems of air-conditioning; reusable materials,
such as wood, clay and brick, should be
used instead of non-biodegradable synthetic
products in new building construction and
renovation projects. Innovative approaches
of this kind not only help promoting the local
architectural environment, but also protect the
cultural heritage of human settlements (where
applicable). In addition they have become a
catalyst for a new kind of ecology-orientated
tourism and economic investment (Lawrence,
2006, p. 124).
Participatory approaches should become an
integral component of the building culture, as
well as development initiatives which aim to
promote and establish sustainable supplies of
locally available building materials (Marchand,
2006; Lawrence, 2006). Local appreciation
for traditional Eastern Cape architecture and
building methods must be bolstered, and
it’s social, economic and ecological value
recognized. The post-colonial dichotomy
between tradition and modernity must be
challenged along with the popular association
of tradition with stasis and ‘backwardness’
and the conceptual affiliation of modernity
with concrete, corrugated iron and all things
Western must be debunked. Changing
attitudes can only be achieved through
educational processes that promote scholarly
investigation, publications, public displays and
open discussions (Marchand, 2006).
Pressure (on architects to design
contemporary, truthful, honest and socially
acceptable buildings) comes primarily from
the local market. In an urban setting of South
Africa, contemporary, modern and “western”
architecture command a considerably higher
market price and social acceptance than do
the traditional rammed earth or compressed
earth blocks mixtures. As long as the South
African elites continue to conceive of mud
architecture as the property of their povertystricken
rural brethren, the Xhosa-building
tradition within the Eastern Cape, as well as
the diversity of other building traditions and
innovative designs throughout the county, will
be progressively denigrated and may one day
cease to exist (Marchand, 2006; Voss, 1992).
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