Architecture of Care in South Africa

Nicholas Coetzer is an Associate Professor and NRF-rated researcher at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture where he has worked since 2001. He is also the Director of the independent non-profit School of Explorative Architecture and a registered architect in South Africa. Nic completed his PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2004 which was published with Ashgate in 2013 as Building Apartheid: On Architecture and Order in Imperial Cape Town which solidified his interest in architecture at the turn of 19th century. Apart from many refereed journal publications and book chapters on contemporary and historical South African architecture and architectural pedagogy, Nic also contributed to a regular ‘back page’ column in Architecture South Africa.

• Acknowledgments. Preface. Chapter 1.Buildings are for people: And other things. Chapter 2.Founders and founding tropes of an architecture of care. Chapter 3.Are you sitting comfortably? Inglenooks, armatures and over-anxious ‘Dignified Places’. Chapter 4.Uplifting work: The moral art of Octavia Hill, unsettling settlers, and ‘Hostels to Homes’. Chapter 5.Climate change: Arts and Crafts and context-based architecture in Southern Africa. Chapter 6.Mud and Soil: The political nature of building materials. Chapter 7.Handmade: From Cape Dutch animism and animated tools to a new ‘joy in labour’. Chapter 8. Concluding Remarks. Index.

Coetzer persistently challenges us to reconsider what “care” might be for architects and architecture. Skillfully interweaving detailed building studies with issues of activism, aesthetics, apartheid, climate, ecology, morality, materials and urban design, he journeys adeptly from Darwin, Morris, Hill and Ruskin right through to Latour, Van Eyck and Spuybroek . In doing so he re-writes our understanding of the Art & Crafts movement, translating it to new geographies and theoretical contexts. Informative and thought-provoking.- Professor Ian Borden, The Bartlett, University College London.