WOMEN'S MONTH
Celebrating Women in Architecture This August, Leading Architecture & Design is celebrating the inspirational women leaders in architecture and related fields with profiles of South Africa’s top architects and professionals from related realms of design and construction.
CLAIRE D’ADORANTE DIRECTOR, PARAGON INTERFACE
NADIA TROMP DIRECTOR, NTSIKA ARCHITECTS
Internationally acclaimed architect Nadia Tromp is best known for creating spatial justice through her work in social and civic architecture. In 2008, she founded Ntsika Architects, one of the few black-owned female practices in the country. “This is still a very new country, especially for many of us who were forced to grow up on its periphery. What excites us as a practise is to be at the forefront of helping to constantly reshape and reimagine this new space,” says Tromp. “It has been amazing to see how our projects have started to transform communities, from primary healthcare projects in Soweto to highly densified urban areas like Hillbrow.” In 2017, Nadia became the first female South African architect to win a World Architecture Festival Award (WAF) for the Westbury Clinic. In 2019 another project, the Transformation and Development Centre, was awarded the highest accolade at the Architecture Masterprize in Bilboa Spain, winning the prize for mixed-use project. In 2015 her design of the Museum of Human Migration (MoHM) won an international design award with the 19millionproject. She showcased a selection of her works at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Nadia served as the GIFA president (2018-2020) and is the director of the UIA WP – Community Architecture + Human Rights.
Tel: +27 (0)11 492 7001 Email: info@ntsika.co.za www.ntsika.co.za
Claire has over 20 years’ experience, and holds a BA Hons in Interior Design from Greenside Design Center. She worked for a multi-disciplinary practice in Australia for six years, returning to South Africa in 2012. As Director at Paragon Interface, Claire secured two of the largest fit-out projects in the country: the new Sasol head office and 1 Discovery Place. The latter won a 2020 German Design Award for Excellent Architecture: Interior Architecture. It was also the Office Design Winner at the prestigious SBID International Design Awards 2018 in the UK. Claire comments, “Very few people in the industry can speak of being part of a project of that magnitude in their careers. I am proud of the outcome we delivered, and how it has been received by the industry, locally and globally.” Claire most recently won SAPSA Professional of the Year Award in the Architecture and Design Class of the Built Environment. www.paragon.co.za
BARBARA SOUTHWORTH DIRECTOR, GAPP ARCHITECTS AND URBAN DESIGNERS
Barbara says that when she began studying architecture, she was in the first year with a 50/50 gender split. Soon after graduating with her masters in Urban Design and City Planning, her career was launched in many ways when her team won first prize in the international Housing Generator Competition run by the Netherlands Institute of Architecture in 1999. Soon after, he was awarded the 2003 Ralph Erskine Prize for her role in the Dignified Places Programme in Cape Town. Her career as a spatial planner, urban designer and architect has encompassed public and private sector experience. At first, she says, she frequently
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found herself “the only woman in the boardroom”, but “never felt compromised”. She adds, however, “I did feel I was taken more seriously when I wore my hair up!” Although now women architects seem more comfortable emphasising their traditionally feminine qualities, Barbara often felt she had to appear tougher than she was. “A really tough time was starting a family one year into launching a new practice and then bizarrely deciding to add on to our home while living in it,” she says. “Who would do that to themselves?” In 2007, she established City Think Space, a specialist urban design practice, which merged with GAPP in 2014. She often appears at key international urban design, spatial planning and sustainability events and conferences, participates in global debates and has published numerous papers, lectures and feature articles.
Tel: +27 (0)21 424 2390/1 Email: office@jhb.gapp.net www.gapp.net/en/
