Background
Just Spatial Design ZA (JSD_ZA) is an initiative that seeks to draw, collect, and share perspectives, resources, and learnings from a diverse network of organisations, practices, students and various other entities and individuals who are working towards Spatial Justice through spatial design in our cities.
JSD_ZA is the current form for this process, and aims to become a larger and more diverse digital support space for design practitioners who are working towards spatial justice in the field of spatial re/development in South Africa.
The platform was originally created as a teaching and reflective writing through 1to1 – Agency of Engagement and various lecturers and students, but is now curated by an independent editorial board. This platform seeks to build a digital space to share and include a diverse set of voices and perspectives on the intersections and overlaps of design, spatial development and spatial justice in South Africa.
Aims
JSD_ZA aims to act as both a resource and platform for those working in this sector to share their experiences, pose critical questions or explore early ideas related spatial development practice. It aims to provide an easy-to-access resource for design-based students, practitioners or researchers working in this sector:
- To provide a platform for spatial design practitioners to share crucial and nuanced perspectives/ideas or provocations in this sector
- Concepts for Practice
- Tools/Toolkits
- Links to other organisations/practices/resources
- Literature
- Local & Global Practitioners Profiles
- To house a testing/thinking/reflecting space for early ideas and perspectives from the contributors (back of house/skunk works)
- Frame nuanced/niche ideas in this sector
- Give a platform to emerging voices
- Create space for new ideas and concepts
Contributors
Christine Botha
Christine Botha is a recently graduated architect from Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research and socio-spatial interests are around design, building and urban processes related to South Africa’s dynamic cities.
Olwethu Jack
Olwethu Jack is an alumnus of the Department of Architectural Technology at CPUT and worked as a technical supporter with
the Community Organisation Research Centre (CORC) and South African Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Alliance.
He is the founder and managing director of UGM Consultants, a group of qualified, skilled and experienced professionals who are designers and community development facilitators in South Africa.
Suzett Van Der Walt
Suzette is a professional architect with 4 years of experience at 1to1 where she manages a project supporting community-driven development and relations of illegally occupied inner-city buildings. She is also involved in the strategic planning of 1to1 projects and aims to support the development of the GIS/BIM for neighbourhoods initiative. She is an aspiring academic, beginning her career as a researcher, and also spearheads the teaching and training initiatives of 1to1.
Thina Dube
Tinashe is a Zimbabwean born architect, who is currently researching informal living conditions within an Architectural context in the world’s largest cities, with the hope of generating principles and design policies that will allow for more adaptive and resilient cities.
Tinashe is busy completing her PhD in Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Dumisani Mathebula
Dumisani Mathebula is a grass-roots socio-technical practitioner who has worked in social mobiliation, and leadership positions in community and neighbourhood groups as well working with Shack/Slum Dwellers Inernational (SDI) through these positions. Dumisani is working with 1to1 in various projects while establishing the oSkotheni Network across Gauteng, South Africa.
Jacqueline Cuyler
Trained as an architect, Jacqui is a co-founder and managing director of 1to1. Jacqui manages the organisation and spearheads the engagements between CBOs, Government, and partner NPOs. She has 10 years of experience and has worked as a community engagement consultant in a number of contexts, including the DRC. She juggles managing an organisation and facilitating engagements, building the capacity of grassroots networks to collect and report on their own socio-technical data to mobilise this information in aid of their demands for housing.
Sibonelo Gumede
Sibonelo Gumede is an urbanist who is interested in the intersections of urban sociology, people centered development, and policy application. He has been driving dialogue and innovation platform opportunities for sustainable community development projects. He uses participatory action research to unlock value and promote civic engagement about inclusive communities.
Claire du Trevou
Claire du Trevou is a director at Bitprop, a social enterprise that seeks to address housing shortages by using a unique funding model to allow private investors to invest in backyard micro-rental units wherein property owners gradually use this upfront investment to earn a supplementary income.
Her early career, upon graduation from the University of Pretoria, was largely spent at a Cape Town based NGO, People’s Environmental Planning, where the bulk of her work focused on research and project implementation in informal settlements upgrading.
Milswa Ndziba
Miliswa Ndziba is a South African student currently in Unit 19 at the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture. For her thesis, she is designing a series of paper toys that make concepts of colonial and Apartheid spatial planning accessible to children. In the final year of her undergraduate studies at the University of Pretoria she interned at 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, an NPO that facilitates spatial design strategies through critical engagement with residents in poor unsafe areas of South Africa.
Jhono Bennett
(editor)
Jhono Bennett is the co-founder of 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, a design-led social enterprise based in Johannesburg. 1to1 was initiated in 2010 in support of the multi-scalar work being done to re-develop post-Apartheid South African cities in the face of systemic spatial inequality.
Jhono is currently enrolled at the Bartlett School of Architecture as a doctoral candidate in the TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing network. His practice-led research interests are driven by issues of inclusive design approaches, spatial justice, critical positionality, and urban planning in South African cities.
Adheema Davis
(editor)
Adheema is passionate about restorative spatial justice, and holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Her exposure has seen her hold the role of Vice-President at the KwaZulu-Natal Region of the South African Institute for Architects, and has supported a reflexive practice workspace that tinkers between practice and theory – currently manifesting through her research interests of Public Culture, Heritage, and Decoloniality. These themes led Adheema to being selected as a Mandela Washington Fellow in 2018, through which she completed a course in Civic Leadership and Engagement at the LeBow Business College at Drexel University, Philadelphia.
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