The three-classroom preschool block hovers above the ground, standing on footings that support a floor of recycled timber sections
This case study was published as part of a longer essay by Tomà Berlanda on the use of waste as a building material in South Africa, published in our Waste issue (AR June 2021)
The Joe Slovo township, located 25km outside Gqeberha, is a textbook example of the challenges of the post-apartheid ‘rainbow nation’. The settlement was established in 1995 when, immediately after Nelson Mandela’s election, a group of families decided to occupy the empty site, giving them hope for a better future. Experiencing the landscape today tells the story of only partial success. The endless repetition of the government-provided houses alternates with more recent informal settlements. Schools and healthcare centres are few and very far apart from each other.
Patricia Piyani lives in Joe Slovo and established the NPO Silindokuhle in 2010, and Collectif Saga were given the opportunity to be a part of the project in 2016. By exploiting the natural slope of the terrain, the three-classroom block hovers above the ground by means of 48 footings that support a floor of recycled timber sections. Emerging from this platform are ranks of eucalyptus poles, cut in a nearby forest, which were then dried, burnt and painted with linseed oil, in order to avoid any chemical treatment. The two separate roof sheet layers, an external curved one that provides rigidity, and an internal flat one acting as weather barrier, are carried by trusses. Around the perimeter of the building, a curtain wall assembly organises different layers of transparency and permeability.
