Some more Beautiful Conrete

In my last post, I wrote about my little class trip to Pietermaritzburg, and althought the Law building was by far my favourite, there are a few other buildings on that campus that are pretty rad too. Check it out:

On a related note, I've heard an as yet unconfirmed rumor that Zaha Hadid will be speaking at congress in Jo'burg this year. I may not her biggest fan, but I'm sure she has an insane wealth of knowledge to impart.

So here's holding thumbs!

PMB Campus Law Building

On Thursday I went with my class to Pietermaritzburg for the day and, believe it or not, there is actually a fair amount of interesting things to see in Maritzburg.

The reason we were there was to check out the site for our new design project, a fine arts school on the PMB, UKZN campus. Its a really interesting project and I'm pretty excited despite the daunting task of designing an entire faculty building.

I took a whole lot of photos while I was there, so I have a few things to share, but today's post is dedicated to the Campus's Law faculty building.

Wow.

The campus is basically split down the centre by Golf Road, dividing it into the more traditional, main campus of mostly brick constructed buildings and the Golf Road campus comprising an assortment of incredibly sexy, brutalist concrete buildings of which the law building stuck out as my favourite.


I love the streaky old concrete and huge windows of the South-facing library and the brick infill panels and the planting around it and the stairwells and the symmetry and... Sho. Great stuff.

Hope you're having a great long weekend!

On a side note, I'm absolutely loving David Crowder at the moment. Certainly not your average worship band. So kiff.

Yakka First Semester/2010

Wow! Its been a long time since I blogged last. Well, been back at varsity for two weeks now, and I've done/seen/learnt one or two interesting things.

For starters, Yesterday afternoon I helped organise the first Yakka party for this year. Yakka is basically just a sort of punch made from Vodka, lemons, sugar and ice with lemonade, or lime cordial added to taste. Its cheap, relatively easy to make and good for making large volumes. I had a few cups, but the large majority went to the 70+ other people who attended, and proceeded to stumble their way to the Varsity pool once the supply had run out.


We started, at 1:30 with a fashion show put on by the new, First Year students. We (the third years) issued them a brief last Monday at their first lecture, which read as follows:


We weren't really expecting much. To be honest we were expecting most of them to just blow it off, but it actually went REALLY well. It was a huge success. I was involved in judging, and took some photos from the table in front of the ramp (built out of tables from studio). Here are some highlights:








And the winners of the competition:



Yeah, that's all gateway and butcher paper. Pretty damn impressive. You can find more photos from the event here, on Flickr.

Congress Round Three

So what more can I say..

Apart from the odd buss tour, most of our time was spent either in the most insane lectures, or partying, there was no in-between really..

One thing that really struck me though from the other universities is just how many pretty girls study architecture. I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself, but its true! I think I need to move to PE/Cape Town/Pretoria!

Enough of that.

We had most of our lectures in this building:

Which is around a massive green quad on the Tuks main campus.

I would never have thought it, but Pretoria is actually a whole lot greener than Durban, and its not just the Jacaranda trees..

The architecture building (Boukunde) is also super cool. A whole lot more inspiring than the mass of yellow brick work and cavernous dungeon lecture halls that is the Denis Shepston Building at Howard College.

Mornings were a somber affair of hung over faces and what can only be described as warm chicory beverages.

Nothing however, could prepare us for the final night: the Des Baker competition.

Held at Freedom Park, and sponsored by the very deep pockets of Murray & Roberts, this was one hell of an event! The competition is held every year and submissions are invited from the third year classes of each school. It's one of the most prestigious student competitions of the year, and a matter of major rivalries. This year however, it would not be UCT, TUT, TUKS, UJ, NNMU or any of the other universities who took the prize, and as tention built, the winners were finaly anounced..

Michael Brunner and Helen Reeves of the University of KwaZulu Natal.