Contributors

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.
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.
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.

Christine aspires to be an architect that contributes to the built environment as an agent for socio-spatial justice and development towards more inclusive city-making.

She is currently engaged in a fellowship with Play Africa that focuses on Children led public space initiatives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jens Horber

Jens Horber is the Urban Land Project Officer at Isandla Institute. He has diplomas in Industrial Design and Business Management, and a Masters in City and Regional Planning, and experience in project management, design, and business management in the industrial design and public art fields. He is an experienced professional town planner, and is interested in urban policy (and how it addresses spatial transformation, urbanisation, housing, and governance), sustainable development, rural development, and heritage.
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.
Nomonde Gwebu

Nomonde Gwebu is a candidate architect, having recently graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand. After obtaining some experience in the commercial property sector, Nomonde is passionate about finding innovative ways to support students to enter and advance in the field ofarchitecture.
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.
Bonolo Masango

Bonolo Masango is a Candidate Architect who completed her masters at the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) in The University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2019.Her architectural ambitions seek to integrate multiple tales, memories, and meanings in the making of architecture. She did her candidacy at MMA Design Studio, a Johannesburg based architecture studio that engages in the African landscape through contemporary interpretation of indigenous knowledge and cultural practices. She is currently an asistant lecturer for ”Unit 15x”; a masters design studio at Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) which focuses on public space on the african continent inorder extend the post-colonial spatial discussions in architetcure, landscape and urban design.
Heather Dodd

Heather Dodd is a founding partner in Savage + Dodd Architects based in Johannesburg South Africa. As a practice, Savage + Dodd Architects believe in the power of design in restorative spatial justice and urban resilience within the context of architectural practice in a society with a deeply unjust past. This is reflected in the scope of projects undertaken in the Practice, which encompass buildings within the public realm such as universities and social housing which are reflective of building new building types for a new society. Working in the inner city of Johannesburg for the past 20 years has given her a unique insight into housing processes, urban living and the urban condition. Heather is an agile design strategist with skills in complex building adaptation and urban housing. In addition, Heather’s skills encompass heritage, sustainability and housing policy research.
Tebogo Ramatlo

Tebogo Ramatlo is an architect, maker, performing arts choreographer and lecturer at Tshwane University of Technology. He established himself as an architect and teacher who integrates thinking and making in his practice since his master’s dissertation, uses large scale model building and stop frame animation to narrate an urban future in which migrant women with children help build the city in which they seek shelter.
In 2018, he collaborated in the Time, Space Existence Exhibition at the Venice Biennale with Nadia Tromp of Ntsika Architects where they built an installation raising awareness about refugees from Africa and Europe as part of a global architectural discourse. He frequently collaborates with 26’10 south Architects on projects that focus on the transformation of South Africa’s built landscape. Since then he has travelled extensively to Berlin, Turkey, Peru, São Paulo and Los Angeles where he has given lectures and collaborative workshops on migration, informality, sustainability and homelessness in cities.
He is currently a Doctoral Candidate in architecture at TUT and his thesis focuses on defragmentation of colonial cities in Africa from the centre, the in-between and the periphery.