Heritage Forum

One of the first shortlists to be announced in the annual “awards season” for architecture, is the Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA) annual award given to the best house or extension completed by an architect in the United Kingdom in the last year. Two...

Six projects will be competing for the 2017 Stirling Prize, the most coveted prize for architecture in the United Kingdom. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gives this award to the building “that has made the biggest contribution to the evolution of...

Imagine a world without fame, famine or fear, a world without waste, wars and mass extinction. Hard to imagine, and yet our ancestors lived in that world. Is it too much to imagine that we could get back to such a world? If we do not, then our future could be in...

In the last century, the Gaiety Cinema was a famous venue in Stellenbosch for several decades, specifically for the community of the Vlakte.  This institution is now being celebrated in a new publication, which was introduced during a walkabout with Wilfred Damon, a...

The recipients of the 2017 Pritzker Prize for architecture is the fairly unknown firm of RCR Arquitectes from Catalonia, Spain.   With this announcement, the ‘Nobel prize’ for architecture, as the Pritzker is also known, has been awarded to only the third woman...

The Architectural Review’s Women in Architecture 2017 prize for Architect of the Year was given to Gabriela Carrillo of Taller Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo, reports ArchDaily. Another Mexican, Rozana Montiel, won the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging...

The inability of, first, the British and subsequently the New Zealand government to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi, has led to the unique decision to grant the Whanganui river similar legal status as a person, the Economist reports. According to the Treaty of Waitangi,...

Road safety in South Africa is a much debated topic. Why are so many lives lost annually when it can, to a large extent, be prevented? According to Arrive Alive’s website, 10 857 people died in traffic accidents in 2009 (the last year for which statistics are given)....

Public space improves the well-being of local citizens, according to The Plaza Perspective. Citizens are better connected, happy and also more prosperous, it argues. But despite some of the world’s foremost cities creating more public space for its citizens – think...

One of three trees who's roots were damaged by the building contractors and then eventually died.  This gave us the opportunity to sculpt one off the trees into pencils.

Stellenbosch Municipality has a deep history and a rich and varied heritage. Our identity as individuals (who we are) and as part of a community (where we belong) is based on our relationship to the environment around us, often called a ‘sense of place’. Human...

The shortlist of 40 projects considered for the 2017 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award (the Mies Award, in short), has just been made available, reports ArchDaily. The projects represent 17 of the 28 EU member states and...

The famous glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris, France, was chosen by the American Institute of Architects as recipient of its 25-year award. This award celebrates a project that has "stood the test of time by embodying architectural excellence for 25 to 35 years,"...

The website Aggregate recently published a new collection of essays - The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS – in which it attempts to put the destruction of buildings, monuments and artefacts in the Middle East in context. According to the...

The Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s first project in Britain has just been launched. The Peninsula Place development is planned for North Greenwich, next to the O2 Stadium (formerly known as the fairly unsuccessful Millennium Dome). At an estimated £1 billion...

The struggle Stellenbosch has with traffic is the symptom of a more general illness that negatively affects the quality of life of the inhabitants. In The Urban Transport Crisis in Emerging Economies the challenges regarding urban traffic felt by twelve developing...

The Kopupaka reserve in Auckland, New Zealand was recently appointed as winner of the World Landscape Prize for 2016. The 22 hectare-reserve consist of five storm water wetlands. Wooden structures were erected next to three of these wetlands, reports Dezeen. The...

Where there used to be a hole in the urban fabric of the Polish city Szczecin, there now stands the 2016 World Building of the Year, the Dialogue Centre, part of the Szczecin Museum. The space, on an important street corner, was used as a park before but was never...

Not only was the prizes for architecture announced at the recent World Architecture Festival, but the interior of the year was also made official. The Heike concept store in Hangzhou, China, by Shanwei Weng & Jiadie Yuan/Hangzhou AN Interior Design is the winner...

The annual award for architecture of distinctive quality built in North or South America, the Mies Crown Hall America Prize, was awarded to the Grace Farms project in New Canaan, California. Grace Farms is a non-profit organisation who aims to “create a platform for...

At the annual Frankfurt book fair, the German Architecture Museum (DAM) announced the list of the ten best architecture books for 2016. Two hundred and fourteen books from 88 publishers were entered and judged according to criteria such as design content, quality of...

On Monday, 14 November, there will be and Open House Event and Public Meeting for the Stellenbosch Municipal Heritage Inventory and Management Plan Project. It will take place at the Stellenbosch Town Hall, at the following times: Open House Event from 16:00 -...

Work by one of the most influential modernist architects, Le Corbusier, has recently been added to the list of World Heritage Sites, operated by UNESCO (the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Seventeen projects in seven countries were given this...

The Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, London, has quickly contributed to London’s skyline with its unique saw-toothed roof on one of the two new buildings flanking three restored industrial buildings from the Victorian era. And, having won the 2016 RIBA Stirling...

For one it is a ‘giant Easter cake’, for others it is visionary architecture: Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, his unfinished cathedral in Barcelona, Spain.     Archdaily reports the project, started 134 years ago, was apparently described as an ‘Easter cake’...

Do you believe a comfortable house in the suburbs will be to your children’s advantage, with enough space to play and enjoy the outdoors? Not necessarily so, says a new study by the Brookings Institution in the USA. According to Ars Technica it was found that growing...

The very high property prices in London are slowly pushing growth to outside the city. In a report in the Economist written before the British vote to leave the EU (23 June 2016), the ‘faulty land-use regulation’ is said to ‘throttle’ the capital. While the immense...

  Two recent academic studies – the one still needs to be peer-reviewed – have tried to prove Jane Jacobs’ 1961 tenets on good city living. In her seminal book on urban planning, The Death and Life of the Great American City, Jacobs argued that four qualities...

Where the rest of the world sees tourism as creator of jobs and economic empowerment, the centuries-old city of Venice is suffering because of the negative side thereof. In the past 15 years the city got 16 new hotels along the Grande Canale – in turn losing...

The recent earthquake in Italy is described by a survivor as Dantesque, according to a letter in the New York Times. About 290 people died in the quake which measured 6.2 on the Richter scale. The writer, chairperson of the Italic Institute of America continues by...