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Stephan scoops Architecture Student of the Year Award

06 December 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Supplied

If all works out, Kovsie student Stephan Diedericks could change the face of the Mangaung Metropolitan Muncipality’s transportation facilities and save the city millions in maintenance costs while generating income.

The Masters Architecture graduate designed an innovative model titled An Interminable Living Machine: Humanizing and Re-appropriating the dormant Mangaung Intermodal Transport Facility (MITF) into a living, economic systems of change which won him the Corobrik Regional Student of the Year Award. The awards ceremony was hosted by the UFS Department of Architecture on 22 November 2019 at the Bloemfontein Campus.

A living machine

Re-appropriating the Bloemfontein taxi terminal located in the Central Business District (CBD) which has been non-operational for a few years would mean that the building sustained itself, and acted a power generator both environmentally and economically.

Diedericks was inspired by the need to improve the quality of life for the people of City of Roses. “This course helped to broaden my perspective on the power of architecture and the social change that it can bring to people's lives,” he said.

An environmentally-friendly concept

According to the young architect, the facility would be water efficient. “Bloemspruit channels run underneath the proposed site and water will be filtered through biologically that will provide water to the entire site creating a self-sufficient living building with water at its heart.”

A thriving economic hub

Diedrick’s 220-page thesis details how the site of the intervention was once home to Bloemfontein’s first power station and that it is this concept of power generation that led him to place clients at the centre of the project as a catalyst for change.

“The Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise Business (SMME) division of the Free State Department of Economic, Small Business Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (DESTEA) serves as the catalyst and a power generator that breaks open the solid mass of the MITF. Several subsystems, including aquaponics and SMME training, feed of the main catalyst and in turn provide resources in the form of food and business training to ground-floor users and micro-enterprise users onto latch onto over many decades of growth,” he explained.

A bright future ahead

"The only thing that we have and you don’t is experience,” said Petria Smit, a lecturer at the Department. “Some of your talent far exceeds ours.” During the awards ceremony, she said it was a privilege to work with students of such impressive calibre.

The awards, which were hosted for the 32nd year, are a way for the Department, in collaboration with Corobrik, to reward the talent of students. Diedericks said his win was a great honour and worth the many hours he had sacrificed for this course. Having bagged his master’s, Diedericks’s future plans are to work for the City of Bloemfontein as an architect or on an urban level when an opportunity arises.

News Archive

#Women’sMonth: Men should help change narrative on violence against women – Prof Solomon

2017-08-23

The panellists at a discussion on Issues
Affecting Women at the UFS Sasol library were
Zane Thela, Head of the Gender and Sexual
Equity Office Programme, Pumla Mgobhozi, founding
member of Embrace a Sister, and
Prof Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor in the
Department of Political Studies.
From the left, are: Thela, Mgobhozi, Prof Solomon,
and Betsy Eister, Director: Library and
Information Services.
Photo: Jóhann Thormählen

The fight to eradicate violence against women is one which men should be involved in. According to Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS), men have to help change the narrative of physical abuse and sexual violence which they perpetrate against women and children.
“Let them (men who might be offended by the #men are trash) reject violent masculinities, and in the process let them redefine what being a man is about. Let fathers teach their sons that no means no.”

Panel discussion on Issues Affecting Women
Prof Solomon was part of a panel discussion on Issues Affecting Women, organised by the UFS library, in collaboration with the Gender and Sexual Equity Office and Embrace a Sister, as part of Women’s Month in the UFS Sasol library on 3 August 2017.
The other panellists were Zane Thela, Head of the Gender and Sexual Equity Office Programme at the UFS, and Pumla Mgobhozi, founding member of Embrace a Sister. Prof Solomon’s book Understanding Boko Haram, focusing on the kidnapping of 200 young women in Nigeria was also launched.

Don’t accept things as they are
Prof Solomon says that responses by the SA government have no credibility and a lot more could be done. “What is clear is that outrage alone will not end this violence.”
Even at SA universities there are many examples of how women are mistreated. “We need to ask: What more can we do as a university to assist these (female) students.”

According to Thela, it is sad that these issues are only talked about seasonally (like during Women’s Month).
Thela says people should raise their children differently in order to change the narrative. “Then men won’t think they have to prove themselves to women.”
And we shouldn’t accept things as they are: “The most dangerous statement in society is to say: ‘It has always been done this way."

Role of women in their fate
Mgobhozi emphasised that women have a hand in the way they are being seen and treated in society. She therefore asked: “What is the role of women in making sure that we dismantle patriarchy”.
According to her women, especially black women, should dismantle the status quo. She added that cultures and parents often influence the way women are seen.
“Women should fight these social problems together,” Mgobhozi says.

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