Heritage Forum

Jeff Speck, who writes about pedestrians in cities, believes that an outing on foot should be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting. An article in the Guardian, also tells of initiatives and projects undertaken in different world cities – from New York to Gangzhou...

Architect and urban designer Henri Comrie has supplied these photographs of a pedestrian crossing on a fairly busy road in the French province of Provence. The crossing made of coarse stone seems to be a very successful means of calming down traffic. It connects a...

  The Stellenbosch Heritage Foundation receives various inquiries about buildings and landscapes in the town and district every week. We provide one example of a query and an answer, in the hope that readers of the newsletter may want to become collaborators on a...

Name:  The Table House Client:  Undisclosed Location:  Philippi, Cape Town Status:  Ongoing First prototype:  build by Hands of Honour     Informal shack dwellers in Cape Town exist in a state of helpless temporariness – helplessness as they don’t possess...

Proposed changes to the R44 between Stellenbosch and Somerset West were discussed on 15 August at a public meeting arranged by Mr Donald Grant, Western Cape Minister of Public Works and Transport, and Advocate Gesie van Deventer, Mayor of Stellenbosch. People at the...

The International Criminal Court will today order reparations to be paid by Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, an Islamist from Mali who was jailed last year after pleading guilty to destroying shrines and damaging a mosque in Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1988....

The theft of copper plaques on historical buildings is still a problem, not only in Stellenbosch but also elsewhere in South Africa. Copper plaques are expensive and can quickly become the target of thieves. Blue ceramic plaques seem to be the solution but is...

While driverless cars are still mostly limited to paper in South Africa, cities in Europe and North America are actively starting to plan for the advent of this new chapter in transportation. BlankSpace recently hosted The Driverless Future Challenge, asking for...

A group of fifty architects and designers have been appointed by the Mayor of London as “Design Advocates”. The purpose is to support design and building in the British capital and to ensure that it is “high-quality, inclusive, and sustainable”, reports ArchDaily. It...

Despite the many lessons one can learn from the Danish capital Copenhagen in terms of city design, there is one important problem that is often overlooked: the size of Copenhagen (600 000 inhabitants) versus cities like New York or Chicago. This is the conclusion of...

Ten buildings erected in the United Kingdom in the recent past, are celebrated on a special series of stamps made available by Royal Mail recently. According to Royal Mail the buildings “represent the renaissance of contemporary architecture in the UK of recent...

The American chapter of Docomomo, Docomomo US, has recently announced the 2017 winners of the Modernism in America Awards. Nine projects were highlighted for the restoration of postwar architecture and landscapes in the United States. Now in its fourth year, the...

ArchDaily have asked students to make submissions for the third Student Design-build Projects. The response was very good and the editorial team have selected 34 projects that they feel deserve wider recognition. Projects from as wide as the USA, UK, Spain, Chile,...

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...