With the intention to co-create a place that supports wellbeing within a safe, contained environment, Charlotte Chamberlain and Nicola Irving Architects (CCNIA) and Tarna Klitzner Landscape Architects (TKLA) designed the Hope Centre in Delft, supporting social justice in a vulnerable suburb.
Delft, like many other townships, was engineered during apartheid to house black communities using infrastructure and natural systems as a divisive means — to separate and to control. The area is further alienated from surrounding neighbourhoods by buffer zones of undeveloped open spaces and poor public transport. Lack of adequate infrastructure and opportunity create a cycle of poverty, leaving the area rife with antisocial behavior and high crime rates. The Hope Centre endeavours to address environmental and social issues, which impact the health and wellbeing of citizens.
Conscious methodologies
Having previously worked together on numerous collaborative projects, CCNIA and TKLA laid clear foundations for the project by employing a conscious methodology of iterative engagement, collaborating with numerous organisations and consultants to firmly embed the project in the context of the surrounding environment, and creating a space that complements the non-profit’s work of providing healthcare, HIV support, and aid for children and families.
As townships developed on the Cape Flats during apartheid, the existing fauna and flora habitats were obliterated. Today, we are left with a series of sandy, windswept neighbourhoods. These barren environments exacerbate the sense of isolation and separation the community faces. In looking for a methodology to regenerate the natural and social landscape and provide opportunities for green, healthy spaces, the architects sought to interrogate the area at a very local level. Through collaborative workshopping, the process focused on iterative conversations and shared drawing, collaging, and modelling to create a platform for communicating and evoking ideas. This methodology begins well before the brief is defined and continues beyond the project’s completion. It is a potentially messy and open-ended process, but it holds the possibility to share great ideas across collaborators.
Healing
Using this methodology, the team was able to identify emerging emotional conditions, which were developed into active design informants, framed within desires of wellbeing. The architects’ collaborative design responds to emotions and desires while leveraging the interdependence between inside and outside spaces to create spaces of healing.Design interventions speak to notions of being held, comforted, grounded, and protected, with the intention of addressing feelings of exposure and isolation that users in vulnerable environments experience. Through this project, the team moves beyond the mere provision of corporal safety. In the words of Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘Buildings do not merely provide physical shelter… they also need to house our minds, memories, desires, and dreams.’
“Design interventions speak to notions of being held, comforted, grounded and protected.”
MEET THE TEAM
Architects: Charlotte Chamberlain and Nicola Irving Architects (CCNIA) | Landscape Architects: Tarna Klitzner Landscape Architects (TKLA) | Eco Design Architects: Andy Horn | Project Manager: Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) | Civil Engineer: Naylor Naylor & Van Schalkwyk Consulting Engineers | Structural Engineer: Alan Hendrie | Electrical Engineer: IME Consultants | Quantity Surveyor: Grey Quantity Surveyors | Irrigation Designer: Arid Earth | Main Contractor: Longworth & Faul, Edge to Edge Construction | Landscape Contractor: EnviroMend
