Lebogang Mbewe

Central to the project’s approach are themes of stitching disconnections, mending gaps, and deconstructing boundaries. Stitching and mending gaps refers to achieving a sense of healing and equality while deconstructing speaks to enabling access to resources, shedding habits, behaviours and perceptions that are not conducive to the well-being and development of ecosystems. The disconnect between humans and the natural environment is mended by stitching green infrastructure into the school and urban fabric while leveraging sustainable interventions as didactic tools for environmental education. The relationship between the school and community is encouraged by extending the life cycle of the school and supporting vocational and intellectual wellness through a wide-ranging portfolio of educational programs that include music and dance studios amongst others. Through a series of reparative programs such as productive workshops, the urban ecology centre and the urban farm the learning centre offers outreach programming that simultaneously responds to the need for skills development and green jobs. Regenerative design and development underpin the design and an adaptive reuse approach is explored through reusing the existing building and developing the school in line with Sustainable Development Goals while architecturally reflecting accountability, equality, democracy and reconciliation as Constitutional values in education. The project integrates vernacular concepts and draws heavily on the ontological use of space in the township with the intention of producing an intervention that is heavily rooted in context.