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The atrium is a central “town square” type area, welcoming in the broader university community. -
A tent-like glass-lattice canopy swoops to the ground, providing shelter over a pre-existing footpath and drawing students into the building. -
The steel, glass and concrete exteriors speak to the evolving character of UCT’s campus architecture. -
The staff space has a non-hierarchical design, encouraging collaboration. -
Mobile furnishings keep the space flexible. -
The building appears to be almost like a piece of raised topography on its triangular site. -
The interior includes a variety of workspaces.
WORDS Graham Wood PHOTOS Paris Brummer
The new building for the Hasso Platner D-School Afrika at UCT is both a product of design thinking and a space to facilitate it.
It seems that German billionaires have a knack for adding landmarks to Cape Town’s architectural landscape. First there was former Puma (now Harley-Davidson) CEO Jochen Zeitz and the Zeitz MOCAA. Now, the Hasso Plattner Foundation – set up by the founder of software company SAP, Hasso Plattner – has funded the HPI d-school building, home to the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrika (d-school Afrika for short), at the University of Cape Town.
While the Zeitz MOCAA might be described as iconic, lead architect Jonathan Ray from KMH Architects, who designed the d-school building, describes their intention as “iconographic”. By this he means that, although there are undeniably some eye-catching elements in the new building – not least the glass lattice canopy that sweeps all the way down to the ground – its aesthetic articulates how the building works rather than just looking design-y.
“We wanted to make the way in which the building was made apparent,” says Jonathan. “So, for example, one of the wonderful things about the lattice shell structure is you can see how it works. There’s no artifice. You see every single beam; you see how it all connects. The aesthetic and how it works are the same.” This is something of an analogy for what design thinking is, and what d-school Afrika does, decoupling the creative magic embedded in design disciplines, and demystifying and democratising it.
Richard Perez, founding director of d-school Afrika, explains that “design thinking” is an idea that gained traction in the US in the early 2000s among various other approaches to “creative problem-solving”. He explains that these skills are commonly taught in design schools, but as an inherent part of their discipline, be it graphic design, product design or architecture. Apart from the things that designers design, however, there is also huge value, he explains, “in the thinking process that gets you to the end object”.
“If you look at how your brain is being wired behind those activities, that is what we teach,” says Richard. And that mind-set can be applied to other contexts – anything from healthcare to housing or financial-services solutions.
d-school Afrika is the third design-thinking school in the world, the first two being at Stanford University in the US, and in Potsdam in Germany. d-school Afrika has been running from a space at UCT’s Graduate School of Business at the V&A Waterfront since 2015. As Richard says, after its initial success, he realised that to have a meaningful presence in Africa, d-school Afrika needed its own place. Luckily, the Hasso Plattner Foundation agreed, and the plan to build a dedicated home began.
While d-school Afrika’s predecessors in the US and Germany had developed a unique approach to space planning, both were housed in existing buildings. The d-school at UCT was the first opportunity to manifest design-thinking principles in a new building. Jonathan says they noticed early in their research that the triangular hill site on which the school has been built was empty, but it was a busy thoroughfare for students moving between campuses. KMH integrated those routes into the building, drawing them under its canopy-like structure and making the building part of the university community. Its tent- like span is a deliberate attempt to build flexibility into the design, so that the interior is easy to reconfigure. The light-filled atrium also helps resolve the tricky geometries of the site and the need for some regular, linear rooms.
Given the ethos of the school, the building also pushes the envelope as far as the challenges of sustainability go, including through the use of cutting-edge technology such as the Thermally Activated Building Structure (TABS).
As d-school Afrika takes residence in its new home, it is a space waiting to have its potential realised, to unlock the possibilities of design thinking. “It almost says to you, you have the right to think differently,” says Richard – which seems a good place to start.
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