PG Bison, trusted wood panel manufacturer and proudly South African company, has been running the 1.618 Education Initiative for 30 years.

In 2022, the PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative celebrates 30 years of creativity and showcasing the work of up-and-coming South African architecture and interior design students. The competition was first launched in 1992 and started out as a means to introduce third-year students to PG Bison’s products. Over three decades, it has grown into a respected educational initiative and a highlight on institution calendars. Many of the winners and finalists have gone on to achieve great success.

“Winning this competition was an incredible tool to jumpstart my career,” says Callie van der Merwe, who won the first edition of the competition in 1992 and is now the founder of Design Partnership Australia. “Being the winner of the PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative elevated my profile beyond that of designers who had been in the game for much longer and made me a better competitor, even though I was still young.”

Andrew Mboyi, the winner of the 2013 edition of the competition, is a designer working across multiple disciplines. “The PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative opened up a vast number of opportunities,” he says. “I’d go as far as saying it allowed me to pick who to work for, instead of waiting for employers to pick me.”

The 2022 brief

Every year, a site is selected for the new competition brief based on where the previous year’s winner was studying. The 2021 winner, Zander Etienne Deysel, was studying architecture at Nelson Mandela University, so for 2022, the competition brief is set in the Kouga region. It’s themed “Living Big” and requires students to develop a proposal for a mixed-use residential and retail space for the Coega Development Corporation, with residential units of various sizes.

Nathaniel Wakefield, director at Batley Partners – a design-focused architecture and interior design consultancy based in Johannesburg – is one of the competition judges and helped us to design the brief.

READ MORE: Winner: 2021 PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative

“My brief for the PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative centred around finding a real-world solution to the real-world lack of housing problem for workers in the area,” he explains. “This solution must be a workable, adaptable and modular model for use elsewhere, where workers could live close to work and avoid spending exorbitant sums of money on transport.”

He encourages students to remember that as architects and interior designers, they will not only be designing buildings, but places where people will live and interact. “We must provide the correct accommodation and offer the right solution for the problem. People need dignity and homes that they can live in and have a sense of pride,” he says. “It’s so much more important than just providing square boxes for people to live in. Basically, we need to create environments where people can interact on a social level when we design these developments.”

The prizes

The winning student and their lecturer each win a cash prize of R50 000, while the runner-up takes home R25 000 and third-place wins R10 000. Those who do not place in the top three each enjoy a cash prize of R2 000.

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Mariam Issoufou Kamara, an architect from Niger and founder of the award-winning practice atelier masōmī, has been selected by a jury to lead the design of Bët-bi.

Bët-bi, a new museum and centre for culture and community, located in southwestern Senegal near the historic city of Kaolack is due to open in early 2025.

Mariam Issoufou Kamara has been selected by a jury to lead the design of Bët-bi from a shortlist of four African architectural firms which also included Aziza Chaouni Projects (Fez and Toronto), MASS Design Group (Rwanda and global) and Meskerem Assegued and Elias Sime (Addis Ababa).

“It is a great honour and a privilege to be selected to lead the design of Bët-bi. For far too long our region has been a place where cultural wealth is pillaged to profit museum collections. This project is an opportunity to design a new type of space that is inspired by the roots and spiritual legacy of the region. It is a chance to push the boundaries of what defines a museum in the 21st century,” says Mariam.

READ MORE: Q&A with Architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara

Bët-bi – which means “the eye” in Wolof – will be constructed on a site in the vicinity of Kaolack situated in the Senegambia region of West Africa which is renowned for the remarkable ancient stone megaliths that proliferate across this area and includes four Unesco World Heritage sites. The 1000 square meter space will comprise exhibition and events spaces, community rooms and a library.

Bët-bi will be a state-of-the-art museum using sustainable and traditional methods of building. Ensuring that the project is an opportunity for meaningful collaboration, atelier masōmī intends to work with local artisans to ensure that there is an exchange of knowledge and expertise.

“We approached this project through a look back at the site’s past. We looked at the history of the Saloum Kingdom very closely and have been absolutely fascinated by its origin story, as a place jointly founded by the Serer and the Mandinka people. The latter are historically also a people from the Mali empire who are known for their monumental architecture. As museums and galleries are a product of our more recent past, it is important for me that the project serves as a bold imperative to continue the recent dialogue around rethinking the typology in order to explore new spatial languages around museums,” explains Mariam.

Bët-bi will showcase contemporary and historic African art and celebrate the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. It also plans to serve as a temporary space for repatriated African objects, expediting the critical undertaking of returning African art to the continent of its creation by acting as a facilitator between Western collections and the African nations and communities to whom the objects rightly belong but which may not currently have the resources to conserve them.

For more information, visit betbi.org.

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The post Mariam Issoufou Kamara Named as Architect for Senegal’s New Museum appeared first on Visi.