South Africa Ithuba Project
Background
The initiator of the project is the Austrian SARCH Foundation, which started its first assignment in 2003 in the Orangefarm settlement in Johannesburg. A workroom and a house for the professors were built by German and Austrian architecture students. Gradually new edifices were added. Five architecture schools are currently participating in constructing a new college in Johannesburg in an area shaped by poverty and lacking infrastructure.
Mission
The mission of the South Africa Ithuba Project is to build a new classroom and a library in the existing primary school complex "Ithuba Skills College", located in the suburb Magagula Heights near Johannesburg, the Republic of South Africa. The project moreover aims to combine sustainable principles together with low cost construction in order to reach an optimal building model for developing countries. The participants also wish to exchange knowledge and skills with other European students and with local inhabitants.
Project
Plans for a new classroom and a library were drawn in Slovenia, where also specific technical studies of the material have been made with the help of professor Sašo Medved, a counsellor for building construction. In August and September 2010 both buildings, made of local materials, will be set up in Johannesburg with the help of Slovene architecture students, local inhabitants, and pupils of the Ithuba Skills College.