BOUKUNDE HIGHLIGHTS
A showcase of outstanding works by students of the University of Pretoria’s School of Architecture, Boukunde. Featuring selected portfolios, academic achievements, and creative projects, that reflects the school’s commitment to critical design thinking, contextual responsiveness, and innovation in the built environment. Explore and be inspired.
2025 Valedictorians
I would like to begin with a quote by Chi Guevara that closely reflects my undergraduate journey, one that extends far beyond its socio-political meaning. It reads as follows:
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”
Standing here at the culmination of my journey, I realise how deeply it reflects a far more personal revolution, one that unfolded quietly, drawing by drawing and long night by long night.
At least in the beginning, it felt like a process of compliance. Meeting deadlines. Following briefs. Approaching the work as a checklist in order to complete the tasks. It was efficient, but it was not transformative, waiting for understanding, creativity, and confidence to arrive. In other words, I was waiting for the “apple to fall.” However, that began to change when Professor Barker once told me to “pull my socks up”, and I certainly did. In fact, I may have pulled them up quite hard as well.
What shifted was not the workload, nor the expectations, but my approach. I began to realise that the true value of this programme was not just in project submissions or final marks, but in the people who I shared this space with, the lecturers, students, and staff who formed a vast “bank of knowledge,” not merely there to assess, but to challenge and provide guidance as well. And yet, that resource only became meaningful when I chose to engage with it.
I started seeking feedback not just to improve a project, but to understand the thinking behind it. By doing so, design became more about exploring a process by testing ideas, drowning in bumph drawings, embracing uncertainty, and sometimes even failing, but failing forward. This shift has led to outcomes which carried intention, reflecting curiosity, rather than ending up with cautious, predictable, and safe results. It became less about “what is required?” and more about “what is possible?”
Before enrolling in this program, I thought that architecture is the design of buildings, but through this journey, I have learned that it is also the design of thought. It is the ability to observe and respond critically and creatively, and to understand that every line we draw carries meaning and consequence.
And perhaps most importantly, I have learned that growth is not passive. It does not arrive simply because time has passed or because we have completed a programme. It requires intention and effort. As the quote suggests, we make it happen.
Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for always having my back and not going back home to Libya and leaving us alone. I would also like to extend my gratitude and respect to all of the lecturers in this department, and would like to thank them for their patience and guidance, and for creating an environment where this transformation could take place. And I would like to assure them that their impact extends far beyond the white building with curved corners, as Dr Nico once said. I would like to end by saying that curiosity sometimes doesn’t kill the cat, but rather opens up doors to growth, prosperity, and success.
Thank you very much and good evening to everyone. I feel so privileged to receive this. Last year, I could never have imagined that I would be standing here, delivering this speech. Coming back from my work year, I stepped into honours thinking I started to understand architecture, houses, commercial buildings, technical drawings all became very familiar. However, I did not realise how formative this honours year would become.
Reflecting upon the year, my most impactful learning curve was a live build in Melusi informal settlement. The project redefined architecture for me. It removed me from my studio chair to co-create in real time, with real people, struggles and real excitement in people’s eyes. A real budget was not so fun but even that taught us something priceless.
The process was different to drawings and presentations, it was messy, collaborative, unpredictable, but deeply human. Somewhere throughout the process something changed for me and ignited my passion to make architecture accessible. It was so empowering to use the privilege of education to design for and with people. To firsthand see the impact of creativity that emerges from listening to people and responding to their realities while you step further away from the isolated desk.
The experience set the precedent for every other project that followed in my honours year. It forced me to keep asking the harder questions all year long. To really think about what happens to the project when the architect finally leaves the site? How do you design so that communities are equipped to expand, adapt and own what we started together?
Without Boukunde’s incredible studio leaders who refused to let us play it safe. Across different studios everyone was pushed into the conversations that actually matter the most, all the pressing realities shaping the world around us, climate collapse, inequality, innovative materials and circularity and environmental justice. It was the non-negotiable foundation of every project and we were constantly given the space to explore architecture this way.
One of the most important lesson of honours was how to confront architecture within the political, environmental, social and economic realities, while still imagining a better future in the middle of it all.
To not acknowledge any hardships this year, would leave my speech incomplete. Honours tested all of us and was personally the most challenging year all around for me yet. There were sleepless nights, moments of doubt and many occasions where everything felt impossible.
But within Boukunde, I also found some of the greatest support I have ever experienced. Our lecturers consistently gave their time, insight and encouragement in ways that carried most of us through the year. I genuinely would not be standing here today without them.
And without my family and the friendships built in boukunde it would also be impossible. No achievement from this year stands entirely on its own for me, because every meaningful moment is tied to the people I experienced it with. In many ways, the friendships and shared memories became the most rewarding part of honours and often the reason many of us found the strength to continue. Friends who sat next to me in studio at two in the morning, laughed with me in exhaustion, helping me cut models and my favourite, coffee at pure. Somehow it made even the difficult moments enjoyable. I really encourage every fellow student to to invest in the friendships you build within boukunde. The projects, deadlines and sleepless nights eventually pass, but the people beside you during those moments become one of the most valuable and meaningful parts of the entire experience.
Lastly to every lecture of boukunde, thank you for never allowing us to settle for mediocre work. At times it can feel brutal, but it always come from a place of believing we are capable of more than what we thought we were. The standard shapes us all, when I look at the work produced by our class, I feel incredibly inspired . The talent, work ethic and creativity of the class is insane, we have been set up by every lecturer for enormous success.
I haven't had much time to prepare a speech for tonight. So this will be a bit off the cuff. I think I'm going to pick up where I left off last year. I'm still Chasing wonder. Or at least how best to reflect the wonder of the world through place-making. Now I have a bit of time to reflect on that mission. I'd like to share some things that I've learnt and been shown during the course of masters.
The world is a wonderful place. What makes a place wonderful, I wondered. Well, I think it's the stories that fill those places. Generations of stories told by people with various backgrounds and conflicting agendas.
I've learnt that architecture is a powerful tool for discovering those stories and translating them into spaces and experiences that allow others to experience the stories of a place.
Maybe it's the stories that we have forgotten, maybe it's the stories whispered by the trees and the rocks. Either way. Our job is to listen, carefully, and allow those stories to speak through the spaces we help create.
You will then find that the business of an architect is not to find or impose new stories onto a place, but to use the ordinary and everyday stories of a place. And, wrapping them up in materials, crafts, function and space, you create an architecture that is at home in it's context and with the people who inhabit it.
Architecture operates at the relationship level. In this case, reconnecting land and sea, fishermen and conservationists, township and harbour.
I think these sections express best what I'm trying to get at. It's not about the archicture. It's about everything around it, the sea, mountains, people and boats. The Architecture simply catalyses the relationships between them.
It's a powerful thing, to think that what we make can build, or destroy, relationships.
I believe architecture is a lense that allows us to better see the people, landscape, crafts and vocations that make a place unique and wonderful. I realised it's not about the spaces or the construction. It's about continuing the story of a place.
Masters gives you a lot of time to reflect. That's why I can talk so much. So for anyone who is in masters or plan to undertake the challenge, use your time wisely. Read a lot, listen to as many different ideas as you can.
Reflecting on the year that was masters...
I want to thank Boukunde, the building which has inspired so many of us.
And The people who call or called it home, my lecturers, friends, my wife, and Arthur my supervisor.
I also want to thank my parents for allowing me to go on this journey.
I want to thank God, the source of all wonder.
To conclude... Now that I've been working for a little bit, I realise the value we uniquely bring to a project. We are the only person on the team whose job it is to care about the people using the spaces we create. The qs cares about the cost, the engineer cares about the building not falling down. We as architects should care about making the world a more wonderful place.
I hope that wasn't too preachy, unfortunately spending a year reading the writings of some very pompous people can make you sound a bit... Academic.
