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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

Pansalb’s Language Rights Monitor Project launched at the UFS

2007-01-25


Attending the launch of the Language Rights Monitoring Project were, from the left: Mr Edward Sambo (acting head of Pansalb), Prof Engela Pretorius (Vice-Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities at the UFS), Prof Theo du Plessis (Director: Unit for Language Management at the UFS) and Mr Vusi Ntlakana (head of the Free State provincial office of Pansalb).
Pansalb’s Language Rights Monitor Project launched at the UFS The Unit for Language Management at the University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with the Pan-South African Language Board (Pansalb), today launched the Language Rights Monitor Project on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein. In accordance with the Pansalb Act of 1995, Pansalb is responsible for the promotion and protection of language rights in South Africa, and is the chief funder of the project. The Language Rights Monitor Project was initiated in 2002 for a trial period of three years, with the aim of reporting to Pansalb, on an annual basis, on language-rights issues in South Africa, as reflected mainly in the printed media. Since then, three reports have already appeared, covering various aspects relating to language rights, including, inter alia, language-rights complaints, language-rights issues, language litigation, as well as research on language rights in South Africa. Profs Johan Lubbe and Theo du Plessis, as well as Dr Elbie Truter, all associated to the UFS, were responsible for the compilation of the first three reports. During 2006, Pansalb decided to establish the project for an unspecified period of time at the Unit for Language Management at the UFS. It is precisely for this reason that the project is being launched. The South African Language Rights Monitor will henceforth appear annually as a prestige publication of Pansalb, compiled by staff associated with the Unit. However, Pansalb has also decided to further consolidate the project, as a result of the need for a more immediate report, as well as the need to include records drawn from newspapers published in the African languages. It was therefore decided that, as from September 2006, a monthly South African Language Rights Bulletin would also be launched. Such a bulletin would provide an overview, on a monthly basis, of developments in South Africa concerning language rights, and would enable Pansalb to become more actively involved in crisis situations in which mediation is urgently needed. Two monthly bulletins have already appeared, and were favourably received by Pansalb. During the launch of the project, this bulletin was also introduced to the public for the first time. With the official launch of Pansalb’s Language Rights Monitor project in the Free State, emphasis will be placed on the leading role played by this province, and more specifically by the UFS, in the development and implementation of a multilingual policy. In future, more information on the situation regarding language-rights issues in South Africa will be made available from Bloemfontein, for the benefit of South Africa’s language-rights watchdog, Pansalb, but also for the benefit of other institutions involved in language-rights issues. A constructive contribution will thus be rendered to the cultivation of language justice, an important element of the democratisation process in South Africa. Issued by: Prof Theo du Plessis Unit for Language Management, UFS Media release Issued by: Lacea Loader Media Representative Tel: (051) 401-2584 Cell: 083 645 2454 E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za 24 January 2007

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