Page 56 - AIT0516_E-Paper

SERIEN STUDENTENARBEIT • STUDENT WORK

mit Textildesignern und lokalen Künstlern entstanden Textilbespannungen, die auch
akustische Funktionen übernehmen. Für den Boden wurden gemeinsam mit
Studierenden, lokalen Künstlern und Jugendlichen Zementziegel gefertigt und in Streifen
verlegt. Die Möblierung wurde ebenfalls aus wiederverwendeten Materialien hergestellt:
Holz aus Paletten und Obstkisten, Teppichreste, Stoffabfällen und vielem mehr. Selbst-
bau Programme sind das ideale Lehrformat innerhalb des Architekturstudiums, um
Lehre, Forschung und Praxis zu verbinden. Architektur als soziale Verantwortlichkeit zu
verstehen und diese mit eigenen Händen in allen Konsequenzen umzusetzen, ist
Kernstück dieses Lehrkonzeptes. Die unmittelbare Erfahrung der Projekte prägt die
Studenten nachhaltig, wie auch die lokalen Helfer und Bewohner der Communities.
Studierende lernen, die selbst entwickelten Entwürfe selbst auszuführen, mit allem, was
dazu gehört: Fähigkeit zu Improvisation und Bewusstsein für Materialökonomie, zugle-
ich aber auch hohes Bewusstsein für bauliche Qualität und Angemessenheit. Dazu
gehört auch, Architektur als soziale Praxis zu begreifen und in aller Konsequenz
umzusetzen. Die lokalen jugendlichen und erwachsenen Helfer erlernen eigenverant-
Kulturzentrums Guga S’Thebe ist Anziehungspunkt für viele Kinder. • Attraction for numerous children. wortliches und selbstbewussteres Handeln und den nachhaltigen Umgang mit Material.

Montage der vorgefertigten Dachträger auf der Baustelle • Assembly of the roof beams on the construction site L iterally translated from the Xhosa language, Guga S‘Thebe is an expression for
“handing something over”. It can also be translated with: “making something avai-
lable to the community”. With this idea in mind, in Langa, one of South Africa’s oldest
townships, the Guga S’Thebe cultural centre was built in the 1990s and, since then, has
been a point of attraction for many artists, children and adolescents as well as for inter-
national tourists. The cultural centre is the heart of the urban township. However, a
venue for theatre, dance, concerts, exhibitions as well as classrooms for working with
children and adolescents was urgently needed. The Guga Children’s Theatre has now
come into being as an extension on the south side of the existing Guga S’Thebe cultural
centre. It consists of a rectangular building which, due to twisting towards to the existing
amphitheatre, forms an almost triangularly bordered square. The latter is at the same
time a forecourt and an auditorium for the open-air stage of the new theatre. The loca-
tion and the twisting of the building follow a footpath found there. During the Apartheid
period, the informally originated path linked the former living dwellings with the post
office and was – and today still is – an important place for casual encounters. The design
and the construction put the focus on using local, traditional and recycled materials. In
combination with innovative low-tech construction methods, we see great potential for
modern, lower-cost building in South Africa. Cape Town with a seaport offers the pos-
sibility of converting cheap, used shipping containers. Individual containers are found
everywhere in the townships and are used as stores and workshops since they provide
security. A problem is the bad construction physic of the walls and the ceilings which
causes too much heat in the summer and too much cold in the winter. By staggered
stacking of eleven used shipping containers on two levels, on the inside a loosely enclo-
sed space for up to 200 people was achieved. The backstage, rehearsal rooms, a soup
kitchen, the director’s office, an audience balcony and a sound studio are in the contai-
ners. Outside, there is an open-air stage, play grounds and a garden.

Architecture as social responsibility

The steel structure was made by working hand-in-hand with a local steel worker.
While the statically essential parts were added by professional welders, the students
were in charge of tasks such as reinforcements, underpinning and preliminary work.
The structure of the pent roof, which opens towards the forecourt of the theatre, con-
sists of nail-plate trusses as they are common in South African industrial architecture
and are easily available and cost-effective. The eighteen trusses were manually put
together at a local manufacturer of supports and, after the delivery, combined into
nine modules on site. Due to the trusses leaning towards each other, a repetitive spa-
tial V-structure is produced which characterizes the main appearance of the theatre.
The support structure remains visible on the inside. To improve the interior climate,
the container walls were insulated with a thermal envelope of light-clay panels fabri-
cated on site. For this purpose, used transport pallets were taken apart and wooden
frames made from them into which a mixture of straw and clay was pressed. The indi-
vidual panels were attached to the container with steel angles. The layer of the façade
visible on the outside offering protection against the weather and, at the same time,
establishing the building’s identity, was made as a back-ventilated façade of re-used
timber of fruit crates from the local agricultural sector. Inspired by the ornaments of
traditional Shoowa textiles, originally from the Congo, a texture was developed, tested
Axonometrie • axonometric view 1:1 right at the building and adapted to the different directions of the façades.

056 • AIT 5.2016