ProfileMy design ethos centers around a sensitivity to context, both natural and historic. Through experimentation and exploration of geometry, I aim to add layered meaning to existing urban and natural forms, and to create inclusive rather than exclusive architectural form that integrates, rather than separates public and private realms with soft thresholds.

Research is a fundamental aspect of both my academic and personal interest in architecture. Key areas I am focussed in are sustainable design, including new methods of urban transportation, geometric possibilities that arise from technological discoveries in materials science, and the intersection of culture and technology that is challenging conventional architectural approaches, specifically in young democracies such as South Africa’s.

The Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree has equipped me with the historic, theoretical and technical knowledge to understand that there are many trajectories to facing an architectural challenge. It requires a diverse skill set, coupled with the tenacity to balance a multitude of ideas that arise from the design process, to understand the challenge and begin to formulate an approach.

This portfolio serves as a compilation of a selection of projects undertaken at the undergraduate level for the Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree at the University of Cape Town’s School of Architecture, Planning + Geomatics.

Thermal Baths ∙ Second Year Design ProjectBo-Kaap, Cape Town

Working at the intersection of the programmatic imposition of a public thermal bathhouse and the historic and cultural sensitivities of this node of the city. Through the mediation of a geometric facade skin, the building attempts to sensitively integrate with its surroundings and gently face the forecourt of the Jamia Mosque, a historic landmark of the Bo-Kaap. Islamic geometry – the pure forms of a circle and square – became the generators for establishing the building’s form and massing. The resulting urban strategy is to give the forecourt space back to the public, rather than its existing condition as a parking lot.

form ▪︎ geometry ▪︎ context

Thermal Baths ∙ Second Year Design ProjectBo-Kaap, Cape Town form ▪︎ geometry ▪︎ context

NORTH EAST ELEVATION

Cultural Landscape ∙ Second Year Design ProjectMcGregor, Western Cape

McGregor has a strong cultural identity, defined by its landscape and extended to the culture that has developed around it. Its siting in an idyllic countryside makes it an ideal location for creatives to dwell in, and in an age of environmental consciousness, this village provides an interesting laboratory for the exploration of sustainable ideas. Its architectural rootedness in the Victorian/Georgian style establishes a strong link to its urban fabric, defining the streetscapes.

As such, our group’s urban plan sought to engage these notions in a sensitive manner. This gave rise to a master plan that takes advantages of the site’s cross-views to the mountain range and valley, accentuated by an extended wetland (Secondary Treatment Facility) that divides the site, and allows each plot bordering the wetland to have shared common space.

Furthermore, the urban plan seeks to be permeable – by not densifying the overall site, and embracing a flexible approach to individual building locations, the new development attempts to continue the overall McGregor urban approach: whilst maintaining a grid pattern, each block has a flexible, unique layout that adds character to the overall partis of the town.

The main house makes use of building-integrated photovoltaic panels – one of the energy guidelines of the master plan, and its long, slender profile is in line with the aesthetic suggestion provided in the master plan’s engagement with historic architectural sensitivity.

environment ▪︎ cultural landscape

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Cultural Landscape ∙ Second Year Design ProjectMcGregor, Western Cape environment ▪︎ cultural landscape

Cultural Landscape ∙ Second Year Design ProjectMcGregor, Western Cape environment ▪︎ cultural landscape

Cultural Landscape ∙ Second Year Design ProjectMcGregor, Western Cape technology

Cultural Landscape ∙ Second Year Design ProjectMcGregor, Western Cape technology

Urban Terraces ∙ Second Year Design ProjectRoeland Street, Cape Town

A mixed-use commercial development at the corner of Roeland Street, interfacing with the Houses of Parliament. This project, named “Urban Terraces”, seeks to build on a courtyard typology with high-density residential units atop a commercial programme of retail units that create a street interface.

programme ▪︎ structure ▪︎ urban context

Urban Terraces ∙ Second Year Design ProjectRoeland Street, Cape Town programme ▪︎ structure ▪︎ urban context

ROELAND STREET ELEVATION

Lakeside Offices ∙ Third Year Technology Project

Lakeside Offices ∙ Third Year Technology Project

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

The culture of storytelling reaches back millennia, but at its core is the idea of a gathering, in a cave, underneath a tree, or in a theatre. This notion formed the entry point into conceptualising the design of the Cape Town Opera. This idea transformed into the geometry, which involves the creation of a series of spaces, mediating soft thresholds between the theatre, its public spaces, and the urban fabric of this area. From the theatre outwards, the building becomes a gateway to a new cultural hub, where its programme overflows into a dense, dynamic grid of kinetic flows and pedestrianised spaces that seek to create a new energy to this node of the city.

The Opera, situated as a gateway to the East City Redevelopment scheme, becomes a striking image as drivers enter the inner city. Conversely, it becomes an activated street edge at the Longmarket and Canterbury axes, where a new restaurant and urban park articulate public flow into the back of house or the main foyer. The theatre drum thus takes the beginning notions of a gathering space and, moving outward, sets up a series of thresholds and the breaking-up of volumes, to mediate the building’s grand scale interfacing with the city, and the gentler, more intimate scales as one approaches the space of performance, the gathering drum.

The connection of this precinct to the city through a redeveloped grid scheme, which encourages new energies and movements, and the deferral to the anchor point of the scheme with the Cape Town Opera, seeks to use soft thresholds and geometric notions to gently allow a transition between the dense hyperactivity of the inner city with this new cultural hub and historic nodes of the east city.

soft thresholds ▪︎ context ▪︎ programme

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

soft thresholds ▪︎ context ▪︎ programme

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

soft thresholds ▪︎ context ▪︎ programme

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

soft thresholds ▪︎ context ▪︎ programme

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

GROUND FLOOR PLAN 1:500

Cape Town Opera ∙ Third Year Final Design ProjectDarling Street, Cape Town

soft thresholds ▪︎ context ▪︎ programme