Urban-Think Tank improving housing conditions across South Africa

improving housing conditions

Design strategy collective Urban-Think Tank has designed and built a prototypical house as part of an initiative to improve housing conditions for slum dwellers in some of the 2700 informal settlements across South Africa

Working under the title Empower Shack, the team organised a design-and-build workshop in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town that is one of the largest in South Africa, and developed a design for a low-cost two-storey shack for local resident Phumezo Tsibanto and his family.

They then worked together to replace Tsibanto’s existing single-storey dwelling with the new two-storey structure, giving the family a new home with a watertight exterior and its own electricity.

 

Emporia shopping centre

Emporia shopping centre

Swedish architecture firm used brightly-coloured curved glass to draw customers inside its Emporia shopping centre. It features two gaping entrances made out of brightly-coloured curved glass, one amber and one blue.

Emporia, which won the Shopping Centres category at this year’s Inside Festival, is a shopping mall located to the south of the city of Malmö in Sweden. The building features residential and office units on the levels above the shopping centre, as well as a publicly accessible roof garden on the top.