- Systemic changes
Our vision for the Athlone neighborhood in Cape Town is founded on the necessity to reformulate spatial patterns of fragmentation and segregation while promoting a new, healthy urban lifestyle for South African cities.
Inclusive Harvest is an open infrastructure, where local stakeholders are engaged to boost a process of community formation across arts, design, and food culture. It’s a pilot project, replicable and adaptable to different urban ecologies.
As an alternative to the current sprawl of single-family homes, Inclusive Harvest presents a dense mixed residential texture with strong links to the site’s productive and public aspects. A series of terraces open on a central courtyard, the public heart of the proposal. The ones and the other become designed habitats for the native flora of the Western Cape, graded on availability of water and wind protection. Not merely decorative, these habitats are the source of agricultural produce, the centerpiece of Inclusive Harvest.
The urban block in its context.
The building is envisioned as an open infrastructure that combines a generous availability of space with environmental quality. The central courtyard and terraces are agricultural plots, centerpiece of the proposal, inhabited with a flora that represents the exceptional environmental variety of the Western Cape.
Inclusive Harvest consists of a new settlement that embeds a rich cultural exchange between diverse communities.
The scheme is designed to be open and inclusive instead of being solely real estate driven, engaging the public in a proactive cultural process of appropriation.
The facade is envisioned as a crucial part of the infrastructure. Large fixed panels are designed to break the wind and provide the necessary comfort in the outdoor areas. In addition, they integrate a water-collection system that contributes to the overall sustainability of the building. The panels will be commissioned to local artists, providing the building with a specific identity that represents the social and environmental ambitions of the proposal.
With the aim of intervening in land markets to accelerate spatial integration, the proposal consists of a dense mixed residential texture with a strong link to productive and public aspects. We propose an alternative model to the current sprawl of single family homes
