Affordable High-Density Housing

Shared first prize Motherwell site: Julian Cooke, Cape Town, and Kristina Lindström, Lars Walldén, Stockholm. First prize Duncan Village: Per Wikström.

From the Jury Report:

At this time during the search for new urban housing solutions in South Africa, the ‘Affordable High Density Housing’ Competition should be welcomed as an important initiative. In this regard the jury values the initiative taken by the NMMM and the BCM in collaboration with SIDA and thanks the many competitors who submitted work. While the competition underscored the fact that it is in the nature of housing design that there is no one single solution, the submitted work as a whole constitutes a valuable resource from which further housing development work and design investigations can be drawn from.

Initially two-hundred-and-seventy (270) competitors registered for the competition, and eventually 59 from South Africa and 41 from Sweden submitted work. Forty-one entries were submitted for the Duncan Village Site and fifty-nine entries were submitted for the Motherwell site. It was evident from the work submitted, both by professional architects and students, that participants both from South Africa and Sweden had invested considerable time and effort.

The jury visited the respective sites in Port Elizabeth and East London on the 8th and 9th of May, where they also met with representatives of the local communities. The two sites posed different challenges for competitors. The site in Motherwell, Port Elizabeth, is a vacant level piece of land with limited contextual clues and is located some 20 kilometers from the city center. In contrast, the site in Duncan Village, East London, is a hilltop site located four kilometers from the city center and is currently occupied by informal shelters and offers views of the sea and city. This site also has existing religious and social facilities associated with it.

The jury looked for innovative ideas which demonstrated an understanding of the site/context and which interpreted the brief in an imaginative manner. At the start of the proceedings a number of criteria for evaluation were agreed upon, which were derived from the competition brief. Amongst others, these included:

• A Conceptual Approach (ideas, visions, interpretation of the brief, the development of a coherent argument,);
• A Contextual Understanding (an understanding of the site, urban design considerations, etc.);
• A Social and Functional Feasibility (questions of affordability, delivery systems, etc.);
• Prerequisites for Social and Technical Sustainability (use of resources, ecological concerns, etc.).

All the entries were exhibited in the Feather Market Hall and the jury assessed the work in a reiterative and repetitive process that extended over five days. Based on the abovementioned criteria, the jury evaluated all the entries individually and in a group discussion context. By the end of the first day forty-five submissions were eliminated, in as much as these did not address all the criteria and on the whole were too abstract and diagrammatic, showing scant consideration for context, as well as being unrealistic in terms of cost. By the end of the second day a further twenty-one submissions were eliminated after much deliberation.

In the jury’s opinion there was not one obvious successful scheme that convincingly addressed all the criteria in a consistent manner. Typically proposals dealt with one or two aspects in an interesting manner, while neglecting other important concerns. Some proposals concentrated on the dwelling unit types, while others were more concerned with technical details, and yet a few others were preoccupied with urban concerns. This condition made for an even more thorough scrutiny of the entries and for the work of the jury to be all the more interesting.

The jury was also mindful of the fact that Low Cost High Density Housing design is a challenging area of investigation. Previous housing competitions have shown the many difficulties that exist with regard to finding good quality urban design and live-able housing units to be enormous. It has also illustrated that good design remains constantly challenged by the financial constraints that this process necessarily involves. However, at the same time the jury was aware that the implementation of the project was important and that a winning entry had to be found.