TEAM

Passionate lecturer and researcher in the department of architecture (DoA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). PhD Candidate at Thswane University of Technology. My research interests are in architectural pedagogy, transformation, African cities, politics of (public) space, urban resilience and sustainability. Over 10 years of teaching experience and 7 years practise experience working in a number of architecture firms located in Johannesburg. I have Co-Supervised 24 MArch theses between 20182021, two of the students I co-supervised won the University’s Top Corobrick award (2018, 2021), which were chosen to represent the university in the national round. i have published 6 articles in peer reviewed journals and/ conference proceedings. Examined numerously at institutions in South Africa such as Wits University, University of Pretoria, University of Cape Town, Tshwane University of Technology and University of Free State. A team player and leader. A member of the BeyHive (Beyonce fans).

Nomalanga Mahlangu is an artist and candidate architect from Kwa-Ndebele, Mpumalanga. She holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Witwatersrand and a Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Architecture (U.J). Her master’s thesis focused on interrogating the need for permanent architecture in African cities to raise questions around cities being fixed mega structures and argue that future cities should be flexible, adaptable, and responsive. In turn, creating an urban environment structured for change. She is currently an assistant lecturer at the University of Johannesburg in the Department of Architecture. She was also an undergraduate design tutor at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria.

uMxolisi Wilbur Ntshona was born in Umlazi Township, Durban in KwaZulu Natal.I hold Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Cape Town. While a student, I explored and researched the KwaZulu Cultural Heritage research of the Royal homesteads in Olundi. The outcome, in turn become a strong drive towards a pursue of the Heritage and Inheritance of African aesthetic and elegance. As a Professional Architect with 17 years of experience within the Built environment, gained and became proficient as Lead Designer, Project Architect, Project manager, Principal Agent and site/construction supervisor. Over the past 5 years I have been an assistant Lecturer, external examiner on Architecture Design and Professional Practice Module at University of Johannesburg. I gained experience in rendering design studio sessions, brief preparations, modules administration and student’s assessments. I enjoy fatherhood activities as presented by age, listening to jazz music and reading literature.

Steven Sotiriou holds a strong and long association with architecture from his formative exposure to study @ the University of Witwatersrand, an internship year at VHS in Rotterdam, Netherlands and an array of contextualizing “home-grown” interventions in Johannesburg: culminating in the establishment of Design Signature Architects in 2013 and its amalgamation into Urban Signature Architects in 2019.

Inspired by the capacity of architecture to influence the way we live, work and more, Steven’s approach is immersive and responsive: reflecting a conceptually strong and creative engagement with site and client.

Active involvement with students as Interdisciplinary Design lecturer lead at the University of Johannesburg has provided a parallel source of activation and motivation for Steven. Curious and intrepid in nature, Steven remains firmly grounded, accountable, and explorative. A keen twitcher in moments of recreation, Steven maintains a “birds-eye-view” of the architectural paradigm.

Lethabo Mathabathe, is a lecturer in the Department of Architecture (DoA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), and a Candidate Architect. She leads Computers in Architecture, Sustainable Design ll, and also assists with Interdisciplinary Design ll, in the undergraduate Bachelor of Architecture year two (2) stream.

She holds a Master’s Degree from the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) which she completed in 2020 from UJ. Her research interests currently include and are focused around Housing, Urban Design, designing with and for communities within landscape sites, and using influences from different disciplines within the design field to better distinguish/ resolve architecture.

Born in Johannesburg but spent the initial years (1993-2008) in Mokopane, Limpopo and returned to Johannesburg to complete his Bachelor of Architectural Studies at Wits. He completed his MTech (prof) in Architecture at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) being the group pioneer students under the Unit System Africa at the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) in 2015.

Currently developing interests in product design and manufacturing, while practicing architecture at a multi-faceted firm in Houghton, Sanjay is consistently looking for efficient and sustainable ways of making - be it architecture, facade explorations, interior design, product design or art. Sanjay previously taught at the UJ between 2014-2017 and being back has been both an exciting and humbling feeling all around.

Thabang Motlhake is pursuing his master’s degree in construction management at the University of Johannesburg. His interests lie in ideas around sustainability, AI, digital fabrication, and how it affects black design within the African continent.

As a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, he further explores how to bridge the gap between academia and professional practice through alternative means of designing as a black practitioner within the realm of architecture and design.

Afua Wilcox is a Johannesburg based architect and a PhD researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands funded by the National Research Fund (NRF South Africa). Her research is based on informal settlement upgrading and state funded housing solutions for low income residents in South Africa. She is a director of the African Architects Collaborative, a Non-Profit company that aims to make architecture and other professions in the built environment more accessible to African youth and their communities. Afua has over 10 year’s professional experience that includes practice, research and teaching.

CLOSET ... A SMALL PRIVATE ROOM, A STUDY, A PRAYER ROOM, A SPACE OF DO -

MESTIC CONCEALMENT... A NON SOCIAL SPACE...

Architecture is a unique art, because it is rooted in the rituals of everyday and sometimes ceremonial life. Those rituals are framed and defined in space by the buildings which we inhabit. Whether designed to house a grand ceremony or provide shelter for a daily meal, all buildings coordinate and consolidate social relations by giving orientation and focus to the spatial practices of those who use them.

We are interested in the questions of space that arise after design. That is describing and revealing the meanings behind and within the landscape artefacts we have designed, even if they only exist as drawings. If the drawing is the artefact, what is design? We are interested in reimagining new forms/formations, new narratives and new space configurations this brings.

Working in the context of a (post)pandemic affords us the opportunity to explore and critically reimagine our immediate spaces (such as your major civic project in first semester, located just outside the gate of our campus). We use this site to ask deeper questions around narratives, memory, access, education and transformation within our contexts (spatially, socio-politically and pedagogically).

In the second semester we take a different turn and work collaboratively towards the major design project.

In 2020 we explored the politics of public architecture by interrogating and reimagining various public building typologies such as police stations, memorials and embassies to bring questions of identity in conversation with those of space. In 2021, we dared to be radical by turning the whole curriculum on its head through our queer clubhouse studio which aimed to introduce students to critical theories, spatial design for people that are marginalised and push to the periphery of many disciplines including architecture.

This year, 2022 we attempt to bring the lessons of the two previous studios together and to deepen our engagement with the multifaced and socio-political morphology of Johannesburg. We continue to address queer issues, albeit from a politically conscious and intersectional lens. Here, queer politics is understood within its intersection with race, gender, class, religion and culture. We use metaphors of a closet to highlight, complicate and interrogate these intersections.

“… the closet originally referred a small private room, such as a study or prayer room. This idea of privacy led to the sense of hiding a fact or keeping something a secrete… it is a space of domestic concealment… it has less legitimacy than a room… it is decidedlyanon-socialspace,itenforcesisolation, italsoprotectsitscontentsfromexposureandharm.”

Hannah Kushnick (2010)

In the studio, the closet includes artifacts such as display cabinets, room dividers, wardrobes, Kists and other similar spaces.

For instance, in Nguni cultures, a wedding is not complete without the ritual of umabo where the bride’s family offers gifts to the groom’s family members as a symbol to form new bonds between the families and for ancestors to recognize the union. During this public ceremony the bride brings with her gifts and artefacts to build relationships with the groom’s family. One of these artefacts is a Kist/chest, a storage box for clothes and linen. A type of a closet.

Parallels and differences can be drawn from the two framings of closet above. They raise issues around domesticity, publicity, cultural and individual expression or concealment. They complicate binaries. This is what we hope to achieve with the studio this year.

The studio (physical space and pedagogically) operates through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches such as critical space theories to frame the project. It brings all modules for the semester, that is Architectural Design, Technology and Detailing (Construction), Interdisciplinary Design, Sustainable Design and Design Studies, together in a collaborative approach towards deepening and expanding the project. We also borrow from other disciplines such as visual arts, urban design/planning, sociology, preforming arts, and politics as a means of widening our knowledge on the theme. For instance, Critical Mapping techniques assist with socio-spatial contextualisation of the project.