Site visit : 11 November 2014

On the 11 November 2014, members of group 1 attended a screening at the Rehoboth Family and Community Center.

The outdoor event moved into the day care on account of bad weather, where the community had the opportunity to meet Canadian Pastor Craig Fields.

Taking keen interest in the development and social upliftment of the Rehoboth community, Pastor Craig Fields was invited to attend an interactive contact session.
Group 1 took this opportunity to present to Pastors Jan and Craig as a form of final cross-examination of the design consideration before a final product is presented to the Rehoboth community.

Before taking over to highlight the more in-depth considerations, Nkhensani began the introduction and continued to run the guests through the socio-technical process which the University of Pretoria's Architecture department has had the opportunity to test in conjunction with the Rehoboth family and community center.

The group also had the opportunity to experience the conditions on site during both night time, and rain.

After our interim semester pinups, we invited Nkensani and his brother Blessing to join us in discussion about the work we presented to our lecturers.

The investigation served as one of our communication investigations. Could Nkensani and Blesing, and effectively the community, could they understand architectural language. The investigation was valuable as it challenged us to explain our findings more legibly.

Explaining context

Explaining context

Explaining structure

 Further explanation

 Further explanation

SITE VISIT

19 OCTOBER 2014

Today we had a progress presentation with the church family. George and I had a quick visit on site where we explained briefly how far we are in the group design progress for their new building.


When we arrived we saw that there was a bit of progress on site of their own regarding the buildings, a few things changed. The caravans was moved to form a courtyard effect to the day care, in a way to create a more private space for the children, secondly they fixed window frames to the wall structure surrounding their class rooms. 

 

Caravans formed in a courtyard shape around the daycare

The window frames installed on the wall

  

 George needed help with the fixing and construction of the gum poles, so he had set up a interactive workshop where the people had a chance to show us their various skills regarding the construction of gum poles. There was small sticks represented as the gum poles, and pieces of string and wire with which they could fix the sticks.

 

 George preparing for his workshop

 

The presentation and workshop set up on the table for the people to have a look

  

The presentation of the groups design progress 

 Nkhensani helped to translate

We suggest gum poles for the main structure of the church, and the main focus of the site visit was for us to see how they would connect the gum poles together if they were given the chance. We learned a few very interesting techniques that George can adapt into his construction design. Interestingly enough, it was the weaving techniques of two girls (Nomasonto and Kgothatso) that caught George's attention and instantly found inspiration for his next iteration.

 George starting off with his workshop receiving help from everybody

 They are explaining the construction in various ways

  The sticks showed to be very helpful

 Mandla and Nkhensani explaining the foundation

 It proved to be a very interactive exercise.

 Nomasonto explaining her weaving technique

The two girl's examples of the rope weaving that got George exited

It was a very helpful and insightful site visit, where we could see the excitement on the people's faces.

Updates from the Studio

Design teams worked through university recess for an upcoming critique by the lecturers. The planning of spaces and the form of the structure was finalised. Minor iterations are yet to be designed from the following week.

Progress perspective drawing From Team 2: Roofing of the design was iterated to become more incremental, as it can be built phase by phase. Alternative opening strategy was looked at. Skylights on roof mimic the shading of the tree which will be experienced indoor. roofing might not be flat depends on the outcome of individual iteration after the following week. 

Members from the design team iterate the updated design

Team member Dominique points out the new design improvements to a team member while modelling on her laptop.

A precedence by Gluck architects was studied to create more flexible and user-orientated design. Note the folding doors can be applicable in Rehoboth's context as means of indoor climatic control. 

Photos from the 09/28 Site Visit

Team member Ursula examines the new design.

Ursula discusses the new design with Nkensani.

A local boy plays with a tire after the service.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

"Design buddies" from the local community to assist the students in their design.

Ursula discusses the design with "design buddies".

Team member Johan (right) and Karima (Left) debates on the analysis of the context.

Ursula takes in suggestions from the local community to improve the design.

A workshop session with the local community held at the classrooms on site.

Team member Ursula (left) and Dominique (right) communicates the design with the local community by demonstrating on the chalkboard.

Team member Marzanne discusses an alternative design proposal with the local community during the workshop.

Debrief and reflect

Meeting with Nkhensani and lecturers

Yesterday afternoon we had the chance to present our modifications and adaptions of our group design to Nkhensani. After various iterations of the layout and design, we have finally reached a design to investigate further and add additional residence according to the client’s needs.

Meeting with Nkensani and Carin

It is important to reflect work done and document it to indicate process whilst keeping the inherent qualities of various tested ideas. After we have finalised the design, the focus will be to create user friendly manuals to understand the building and all of its components. These need to be legible and simple diagrams communicating the core of the idea. We (the students) have soon learnt of the misunderstanding of architecture in terms of understanding what is trying to be communicated and that the conventional method of presenting architectural plans is unilateral.

Our aim for the following week will be to capture the essence of the design(s) and communicating it in an accessible manner to the people who we are designing for. The people of the Rehoboth Family and Community Centre is after all the generator for every decision and is included in every step.

01 October 2014

As part of the socio-technical development undertaken in the design process of the Rehoboth Family and Community Centre it is important to address the significance of input from both the design team and the community.

The development of the Brief:

The group understood the Pastor's vision and developed it into a manifesto that we labelled as the client brief. this encompasses the direction and ideal of the permanent beneficiary.
We then refined and debated these ideals to establish a time scale of implementation, based on funding, value and necessity. 

These ideals were challenged by the design team and the every-day user of the space through community participation sessions on site-visit days, the information collected was then distilled into what we called the user brief.
the user brief helped us establish the actual beneficiaries of the site and this allowed us to begin addressing the fundamentals of the concept.

The concept was the driver for establishing an architectural brief. This document is still under process and the content thereof will continue to change as the concept challenges the user, client, architects, and site values. 

The design process:

The process has been slow, however, no wrong turns have been made. Generic to the nature of design every questioned decision derived positive feedback. At this point design of the community centre is being used as a tool to question the values of site, client ideals, architectural response and user wishlist. 

Design Process

29 September 2014

The windy conditions that introduce our rainfall season had a visible effect on the tent during our site meeting yesterday and made the urgency for a new structure for Rehoboth very clear. We had a chance to present our design proposals to members of the congregation and collect more information from the site and its surrounding context.

After meeting with more lecturers and another site visit, it is clear that one of the bigger design challenges would be for us to negotiate between the community’s visions, the reality of the conditions on the site and the implementation of our experience. Today we returned to our drawing boards where we had to use our judgement in changing the deign proposals according to the input of the congregation members and our lecturers. It also marks the start of our focus on very specific parts of the design that each student will further work on for the rest of the project through the participation of congregation members. These parts or themes include among others a focus on acoustics, lighting, structure, ventilation and thermal performance.

Group models of design proposals

The Brief & site visit

21 September 2014

It started out as a chilly Sunday morning, but as we arrived at the site  immediately warmed up. There we were strolling through the streets, trying to do site analysis and experience the surrounding context; figure out how we were going to address the client's brief... and then the music started. 

[The team on site]

In stead of church bells announcing the service was about to start, you could hear voices from blocks away, their song calling for all and anybody to join.

[music station - where the magic happens]

[Karima & Pieter engaging with community members]

We hurried back and found people praying, singing and dancing inside the tent structure. Welcoming smiles, curious glances and warm embraces from the community greeted us - strangers, who as we later found out during the service, had been foretold in a prophecy to come across their path in their journey to the further establishment of their vision.    

[Youth in front of the kindergarten structure, also where Sunday school is held]

The brief for us as students and designers is as follows: 
In two groups create design proposals to house the client's vision of a new Community centre to accommodate the existing programs of kindergarten, adult literacy classes and the church. as well as allow for growth and should be able to accommodate more people during events like their Gala evenings and the True Love movement for youth development, during which the youth choir and dance group perform. 

[Ali being a true architect;
sketching away]

[George talking to the church representatives]

[Determining wants & needs]