The City Centre Sustainable Housing Competition which we have been running for the last few months closed with a prize-giving event last week.

The competition aimed to generate new ideas for inner-city sites and sustainable housing and was developed by the CIB and sponsored by the NHBRC and Boogertman and Partners. The competition was a collaborative effort and generated a lot of interest. Here are some numbers:

• 3 CIB Commissions initiated the competition.
• 5 -10 people formed the core planning and implementation team.
• 5 months to plan and develop the competition.
• 4 months to run the competition.
• 2 sponsors for prizes, refreshments, and the printing of student entries.
• 10 schools of Architecture involved.
• 12 online seminars presented by international and local experts on urban, architectural, housing and sustainability topics.
• 50 to 60 people attended each of the online competition seminars.
• 0 was the cost to students for entering as all printing costs were sponsored.
• 68 competition entries were received.
• 181 students took part in developing entries.
• 1 university department hosted the exhibition and prize giving.
• 5 judges from research, government and private practice adjudicated the competition.
• 80 -100 people attended the prize giving including people from the Department of Human Settlements, the Department of Science and Innovation, the NHBRC, the Institute of Human Settlement Practitioners South Africa, the PIA, The City of Tshwane, UJ, TUT, UP and NMU.
• 5 queries about the next competition.
• 1000s of hours of research and creative work and.
• 100s of ideas about how city centre sustainable housing could be developed.

What these numbers do not show is the background work required to make the competition a success and I would like to thank the following organisations and individuals for their contributions:

• The CIB for supporting the competition.
• The NHBRC for sponsoring the prizes and refreshments.
• Boogertman and Partners for sponsoring the printing of entries.
• UP for hosting the prize-giving and setting up the exhibition.
• Workshop speakers Gita, Bob, Ezekial, Isaac, Francine, and Jeremy.
• Judges Jennifer, Heleen, Isaac, Mark and Jeremy.
• Isaac, Busi, Bob, PD, Sijekula, Theo, Francine, Jeremy, Eira and Goh for being the core team.
• Pieter for drone footage and photography.
• Francine for helping organise the site information and for coordinating entries and the exhibition including printing off all the entries.
• Guests for attending the prize giving.
• The Architectural schools and their lecturers and students for the entries.

The image above is from the winning entry by Amahle Ngcakane, Hlonela Gulwa, and Lihle Gule from Nelson Mandela University, School of Architecture.