Conversations on Architecture is Decorex’s yearly treat to the building industry: a day of lectures by a line-up of local and international architects, given in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Marine Leblond attended and reports that the speakers seemed to share a common interest: the clever and novel use of everyday construction materials.

Solano Benitez comes from Paraguay, a small country with many ancient cultures, and “as many ways to think about our world”. Taking the cue from his countrymen he has learnt to look at clay bricks in the most unconventional ways. To make a cheap building, Solano has a three-step strategy. Start with using the cheapest material. Then reduce the amount of structure to the minimum. Finally, change the way you build with the material. Solano constantly experiments on site during the construction process, until he comes up with structures that challenge our idea of what can hold up, like 4cm-thick brick walls and vaults, all built by hand. His strong understanding of structure and the forces at play within a building allow him to get rid of unnecessary material, like, say, the concrete around the re-bars at the base of a concrete column.

Solano seems always playful, even when it comes to his father’s grave. In a piece of forest that he loved fondly, four cantilevered concrete beams define a nine meter-sided square, with the tomb at its centre. The inside face of each beam is clad with mirrors. As one steps into the square, the heavy beams disappear, leaving the visitor faced with infinite reflections, like spectral versions of oneself, surrounded by the forest, ferns and roots.

London’s dRMM, represented by director Alex de Rijke, is obsessed with another material: engineered wood. That means laminated timber beams, cross-laminated timber panels and other techniques that can “change softwood into hardwood” – very stable, precisely calibrated and strong structural elements with a low carbon footprint. Using these, even towers can be built of timber, with no need of a concrete core. But it has proven difficult to convince clients, once more set in old habits, even though dRMM’s MK40 Tower, a temporary 20m-high artwork and experimental structure, was all timber. It was afterwards unscrewed and neatly stored in a shipping container, ready to be assembled again. The same idea applied to the Naked House, a 100 square-metre flat-pack kit house that was assembled in three days by Alex himself and a colleague, with only the help of a crane driver, for an exhibition in Oslo.

Experiments carried on with the Tower of Love, which in its early days mostly got hatred from local residents. Sure, it is radical architecture, even for the eccentric English town of Blackpool. But what is not to like about this “super-sustainable construction”? On a plinth of concrete blocks that combine cement, recycled glass (from locally drunk bottles) and wood fibres, the wedding venue is a cross-laminated timber edifice, clad in shimmering golden stainless steel shingles. In this wedding hall, shaped like a giant camera chamber, couples tie the knot with Blackpool Tower as a backdrop.

In contrast, Stellenbosch-based architect Johann Slee is self-admittedly old school – in a good way. He is not interested in swapping his pencils for a mouse, and given his talent for graphite drawings, this is good news. His materials of predilection are the ones from the very land he builds on. And so the massive walls of the Stone House (read VISI’s feature here) were made of stone entirely found on the site. If the Red House blends into its landscape so well, it is because its walls are coated with the local red mud, mixed with cement. With “simple, cut-the-crap” design, Slee creates architecture in continuity with the vernacular, and does not fail to be contemporary and luxurious.

At the other of the spectrum, Jörg Leeser of German firm BeL shows a very dry design: pure lines, minimalist details, white geometry. Very simple elements are carefully composed. The Fraba Sp. z o.o. is an industrial building with an assembly line. The structure is simple: a circular floor, plain steel columns and a triangular pattern of laminated timber beams for the roof, all immaculately white. To keep things to their minimum, the bare waterproofing material is used as the outside skin. The carefully laid bitumen sheets with their layer of reflective foil finish a look that is simultaneously low tech and sci-fi.

BeL are also architecture activists. In various collaborations with artist Merlin Bauer, the BeL office has worked at making the people of Cologne aware of their surroundings and committed to preserve its heritage. A highly successful project was the Strandbox. An ice-cream cart was re-purposed: covered with Le Corbusier-designed wallpaper and fitted with a pirate radio transmitter. Various hosts were invited to broadcast live throughout the public spaces of Cologne. Highly visible and super mobile, the little red-and-white Strandbox helped citizens discover their city, sparking social interaction and events, and becoming a shifting landmark of Cologne’s cultural life.

Hands-on design and experimental construction seem to be key. Fellow architects, it is time to play.

Marine Leblond is an architect and urbanist. Trained in France, she worked in London and Paris before stopping in Cape Town seven years ago.

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The Velodrome, Aquatic Centre, Gardens by the Bay, the Red Museum and more… We take a whistle-stop tour through the architecture 2012 highs and lows, in South Africa and the world.

Although 2012 was an Olympic year, there was relatively little noise around the new London sport facilities – nothing comparable to, for example, the display of wonders for the Beijing 2008 Summer Games. It is probably the result of a pragmatic approach, emphasising long-term use and economical design rather than mind- (and budget-) blowing extravagances. Nonetheless two buildings stand out, though rather opposed in their design: Hopkins Architects’s toned-down Velodrome and Zaha Hadid’s typically fluid Aquatic Centre.

Maybe the British Olympic park was shadowed by another monumental infrastructure, which – as far as I have read – has wowed every critic and visitor when it opened last year: the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. It comprises gigantic hi-tech tropical gardens by the sea, punctuated by the awesome Supertrees, as well as series of cooled conservatories by Willkinson Eyre, which were elected Building of the Year 2012 by the World Architecture Festival jury.

Another Building of the Year 2012 title was bestowed on our very own Red Location Museum by Jo Noero in Port Elizabeth, this time by Icon Magazine. Jo is the hero of the year for SA architecture, as he was also the only African invited to participate in the International Architecture Exhibition, the main programme at the Venice Biennale. His practice Noero Wolff Architects also recently split into Noero Architects, and Wolff Architects. This means twice as much to look forward to for us, really. (Two other South African architects, Johann Slee and Pieter Mathews, participated in the Traces of the Century and Future Steps exhibition.)

A few other local realisations attracted international attention: the much talked about Babylonstoren and its neo-romantic gardens in the Cape Winelands; the fab prefab Westcliffe pavilion by GASS Architecture Studio; and the small-cost, big-hearted New Jerusalem Children’s Home in Midrand.

As for the good-byes, 2012 was marked by the loss of two architectural geniuses. Oscar Niemeyer died aged 104. If the body gave up, his visionary and joyful mind was at work until his last days. Oscar was the last modern master, who dreamt and realised the utopian city of Brazilia and nearly 600 buildings over the world. He was a convinced communist who built indulging bourgeois abodes, a modernist who surrendered functionalist principles to his love of “free and sensual curves. The curves we find in mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love.” He inscribed them like a poet in elegant shapes of white concrete.

We also mourn the passing og radical paper architect Lebbeus Woods. Although he only completed one building, in the last year of his life, he leaves behind an extraordinary collection of intricate drawings and models, a body of work made of alternative universes. His post-apocalyptic visions sought new ways of experiencing spaces and cities. His quest, for himself and thinkers around him, was for discomfort – a challenging position in which the mind cannot be at rest. He has been a huge inspiration, cult even, to many avant-garde architects. Like a character from the worlds he created, he passed away in Manhattan while around him the hurricane was taking over the metropolis, the streets flooding and the lights going out. His voice still lives in cyberspace, on the blog he started a few years ago.

Finally, for those who attended the ArchitectureZA 2012 conference in Cape Town and specifically Rahul Mehrotra’s lecture remain, in retrospect, a highlight of the year. One of these events that sticks with you for a while, and maybe even changes you a little.

Marine Leblond is an architect and urbanist. Trained in France, she worked in London and Paris before stopping in Cape Town seven years ago.

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Year after year, buildings climb higher and higher, in an impossible attempt to connect the earth to the skies. An exciting new show on Discovery Channel inspired us to collect together the 10 most striking skyscrapers around the globe in 2012.

Premiering on Sunday 4 November at 8.55pm on Discovery Channel is How We Invented the World with an entire episode dedicated to the origins, visionaries and significance of the skyscraper. Here is an exclusive VISI excerpt, dramatising the attempted bombing of the Empire State Building.

Tall towers have captivated people since the legends of Babel and the age of the Pyramids. Today we can build, live and work above the clouds. One of the defining inventions of the 21st century, inspiring awe is the only true purpose of skyscrapers. They are the stuff of dreams and bling.

A towering building whose weight is supported by a steel frame rather than by masonry walls, the skyscraper is among the most amazing achievements of modern engineering and technology, and has dramatically altered the appearance of the world’s biggest cities. Every year, the competition gets more fierce and fast-paced in the attempt to build the highest, maddest, coolest towers.

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