Anne-apolis

  If you have been to the Wits Club or Alumni Offices at the University of the Witwatersrand in the last couple of years, you may have seen this unusual structure. It is a recent interpretation of a structural type that is extremely ancient, with surviving evidence of examples from Ancient Egypt and the most ancient cultures of the Middle East. The curved roof forms are amazingly efficient, such that they can be built from materials that have very little structural strength, such as sundried earth and cement-stabilised earth, which is the material used for the roofs in the Wits building. The Wits masonry vaults http://www.claisse.info/2019%20papers/5021.pdf My interest in this material goes back to the mid-2000s, when I was exploring labour-intensive approaches as part of my PhD. I was already aware of stabilised earth, as several of my colleagues in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering had been researching it, and we already had a diesel and a fully manual block press...

 In May this year I visited one of my colleagues who has recently relocated to the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. The School is in a very new building, with some really innovative ideas in space planning as well as the expected use of advanced technology in the teaching and laboratory spaces. The biggest difference that my friend noted in his new environment was that the staff did not have individual offices, but rather a shared space. This is supplemented by a number of ancillary spaces for consultation, whether with colleagues or with students, ranging from quite formal enclosed kiosks to less formal seating scattered throughout the building.  Consultation kiosks near the open-plan staff room The entire building is designed around an impressive foyer space, with a number of the informal seating areas visible from the circulation routes. What I found especially striking about this arrangement was the sense of inclusivity, where stude...

  If you live in a city, walking the dog, cycling, going for a run, or even just sitting reading can be much more exhilarating in a really large green open space. This is even more the case in a city like Johannesburg, which is totally landlocked, with no large expanses of ocean or mountain to relieve the oppressiveness of the "concrete jungle". But the pleasure of engaging with nature in a large area of parkland is just one of many benefits that such an amenity provides in any city. Delta Park looking towards Rosebank One of my favourite green spaces is Delta Park in the north of Johannesburg. It has an interesting history, in that it was the location of the sewerage works for this section of the city from the 1930s until the 1960s, when this function was removed to the northern boundary of the city. The original administrative and primary treatment building, in the Art Deco style, still exists, commemorated by a Blue Plaque. Some of the walling of the original settlement po...

When I was in my early teens, my family made the most wonderful decision to get a piano, so that my siblings and I could learn to play this distinguished instrument. Both of my parents were very musically talented, and were key members of their church choir for decades, but neither of them had been given the opportunity to learn the piano. My sister and I both became quite proficient, and I kept the family instrument for many years, giving it up only when I moved to a place where I felt there was not enough room. This was in an apartment block, so I was also conscious of the sound travelling and disturbing my neighbours. My older daughter had piano lessons for a while as a child, but while she enjoyed playing, the style of teaching did not align well with her style of learning. With most things, she plunges in at a very advanced level and simply straddles the gaps until she is competent, an approach which has served her very successfully in skills as diverse as needlecraft and statisti...

 Earlier this year, I published a blog on care homes , reflecting on my experiences while visiting my mom and engaging with some of the activities that she is fortunate to have available to her. More recently, I have spent much more time with her at her care home, helping her to rehabilitate from a spell in hospital. An important part of this was helping to restore her mobility - even at the age of 94, she has almost full mobility, giving her a level of independence that is core to her wellbeing and self esteem. In the first weeks back from hospital, my mom was accommodated in a high-care ward so that she could have round-the-clock nursing support, but the plan was to see if she could rehabilitate to move back to her own room in the mid-care section. I was very involved with the nursing staff of the home and the physiotherapists in encouraging her to walk, initially to the communal lounge, and as time went on, all the way to her old room. In this process, I became aware of some ver...

  Apart from a small handful of visits to the UK, my knowledge of the English countryside is entirely based on the extensive literature that describes it, in both novels and poetry. While I am sure that it is beautiful in all seasons, spring is quite extraordinary, with lush vegetation and a constantly changing array of wild flowers and butterflies. I stayed in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire for most of May, and we went for walks nearly every day, in what has been observed as the sunniest spring in recorded history in the UK. View over barley fields Much of the English countryside is taken up with farming, but the fields are lined with natural vegetation and interspersed with miniature nature reserves and reclaimed meadows of wild flowers. Even golf courses have natural woodland on their perimeter, fully accessible to the public, and great for walking the dog. Public pathway adjacent to a golf course In the south of England, there is a gradual transition from the natural landscape...

 My knowledge of British New Towns is grounded town planning theory, referring to those towns designed to alleviate population growth in London after World War II. When I was putting together a course on the history of urban design, it came as a surprise that there was a much older "new town" founded in Edinburgh in 1767, which I was fortunate to be able to explore in April this year. Charlotte Square, Edinburgh New Town Edinburgh Old Town has its origins in the early Middle Ages, from the 7th Century, located on a spur of rock with extinct volcanoes on the west and east end, with two lakes (in Scotland called a loch) each parallel to the spur of rock, to the south and north. When it was decided to lay out a new suburb for the wealthy, the old city having become overcrowded, the decision was to locate it to the north of North Loch with bridges connecting it to the old town. It was planned on strictly geometrical lines, with three main parallel streets, with a large grassed sq...