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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

UFS hosts a successful New Music Indaba

2015-08-18

Held at the University of the Free State’s Odeion School of Music (OSM), the NewMusicSA’s New Music Indaba 2015 featured works which Clare Loveday described as “breathtaking, discreet, and perfectly balanced.”

Loveday, one of South Africa’s acclaimed music critics and was Composer-in-Residence for the annual Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, attended the Indaba from 21-26 July 2015. In a review of Saturday’s gala concert, she referred to recitals of this nature as an “essential part of the South African musical landscape, providing musicians and composers a space in which to express their world.”

Staff and students of the OSM were extensively involved in facilitating the festivities as a symbol of commitment to South Africa and international contemporary art music. The OSM Camerata under the baton of Xavier Cloete performed two works by South African composer Hendrik Hofmeyr well as a work by young Argentinian composer Diego Soifer entitled Mille Regretz .The festival featured music theory lectures, a variety of workshops, roundtable discussions ,concerts as well as an outreach programme.

Loveday described the highlight of her Indaba experience as “A delicate construction of sounds and silences that drew the listener into a focused and intense sound world,” a highlight created by the visiting German composer, Charlotte Seither’s “Far From Distance” for piano, clarinet, and cello. The concert evening culminated with Diale Mabitsela's "Friday Nights at Six," adding to the spectacular nature of the festival.

Throughout the week, classical chamber works featuring South African New Music Ensemble (SANME), the Choir of Christ Church Arcadia, and the Odeion Vocal Consort were performed and well-received. Bringing the five-day event to a conclusion was a choral mass at the Bloemfontein Anglican Cathedral, featuring an “Agnus Dei” written by George T. King.

Douglas Scott, Curator of the 2015 Indaba, reflected on it as a great success, saying that, “most of the participants agreed the event was a wonderful opportunity simply to hear different voices from the composition community juxtaposed with one another.”

From Scott’s perspective, the principal goal was to foster communication between artists with different visions, and to reach out to the local community.

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