Heritage Studio: Urban Transformations

Studio leader: Johan Swart

The Urban Transformations studio acknowledges that sensible additions and extensions to existing heritage sites are critical to the sustainable transformation of the city and that such projects are of increasing interest and relevance within contemporary architectural discourse. The spatial and functional extension of heritage fabric and the mediation between existing and potential conditions allows for complex spatial experiments within broader debates about meaningful urban transformation. Focusing on the Sunnyside inner city housing precinct, the studio will enable a series of urban infill projects to engage with existing Modern Movement ensembles towards the development of design proposals for extensions, additions or densifications. These designs could range from subtle immersions to provocative oppositions and from carefully suggestive manipulation to creatively destructive reconfiguration.

The studio projects will interpret existing buildings in the Sunnyside neighbourhood and discover their potential within suggested urban renewal processes. An engagement with best-practice case studies and theories of architectural conservation will provide a basis for explorative concept development and design resolutions that will be communicated as extensions to the existing and in synergy with the urban context. Apart from engaging with heritage discussions, utilising drawings from the AAUP archive collections and becoming acquainted with an unexpectedly rich architectural precinct, students will also develop their ability to deal strategically with complex existing spatial scenarios towards critical new architectural layers.