PROFESSIONS DESIGNER AND COMMUNITY ARCHITECT
Community architect and designer, Kevin Kimwelle, in the Portswood District of the V&A Waterfront. In the background is the V&A ‘Octopus Garden’, a food garden built using ecobricks as advised by the Ecobrick Exchange.
Community architectural designer for circular economy Kevin Kimwelle is a Kenyan-born architect and concept-driven designer. Having travelled to various countries in Africa, Kimwelle observed that many examples of modern architecture do not uplift the communities in which they are built, being commercially-driven projects instead. He is a speaker at the Design Indaba, Cape Town. [ Ref: www.designindaba.com ] Gareth Griffiths
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Build’s editor met Kimwelle on site at the V&A Waterfront where he is assisting to bring his unique recycled glass bottle design concept into mainstream building development at The Ridge, a new commercial eco-building under development in the Waterfront. Kimwelle believes that a building should facilitate ongoing growth to the people who use it, especially young people. He led the redesign of the Joe Slovo West Community Project in the Joe Slovo Township,
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Port Elizabeth, which was completed in September 2015. The walls of the children’s preschool were constructed using approximately 1 500 discarded wine bottles, reflecting Kimwelle’s cost-effective and environmentally conscious approach to building design. He has an ongoing association with the Indalo World NGO, which operates in the holistic sustainable development space.
volume 10 | issue 1 www.tobuild.co.za
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