the site

The Kanana (paradise!) primary school (founded 2001) is situated in ivory park a region in the north west of johannesburg. The region is marked by 50% of unemployment and about 70% live under the povertyline. The govermental school is surrounded by a typical residential township area aswell as informal living and serves a number of 2 368 learners from kindergarten to 7th grade. As newly implemented in the compulsory schoolprogram grade 0 known as grade R, a lot of schools lack of the infrastructure and classrooms to comply this.

The existing school infrastrcture offers 61 teachers, 43 classes including prefabricated huts, which will be upgraded by shanduka and a big sport ground.

The school needs an extension of 5 classrooms and a service block with kitchen and toilets which will be placed inside the school next to the existing buildings on municipal land.

With the recommandation of our partner Education Africa and the local Adopt a School Foundation we are asked to design and build these new grade R classrooms to provide space for about 80 to 100 kids at the age of 6 years in the outset stage of their educational career.

...work in progress...

S-HOUSE | SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

Sustainable construction can be defined as follows: Not only the building concepts but also the components and materials which are used have to meet the present needs o the users without burdening future generations with wast disposal problems or prolonged use of an out-dated building design.

Thus sustainable architecture means: form follows ethics, i.e. the design is the result of a careful consideration of functions, materials and their life-cycle performance including long term perspectives, present and future human needs and social aspects. This is the basic principle under which the S-House, a passive solar house made of renewable resources, is constructed.

Passive solar house technology is already well known. Building materials based on renewable resources are present in some areas (e.g. wood). But the combination of both is quite unique. This combination is made visible by the S-House, an office and demonstration building at the Center for Appropriate Technology in Böheimkirchen / Austria. After a careful planing phase the building was put up in early 2005. In this paper the process of the S-House building phase is described. Details of the building are mentioned in addition to important background information.

The challenge of the S-House-project consists in combining the high energy standard of passive solar house technology (less than 15 kWh/m2a) with the use of renewable resources and herewith to benefit from the advantages of both.

s-house.at

photos of the visit to the S-HOUSE

Robert WIMMER Dr., Hannes HOHENSINNER Dipl. Ing., Manfred DRACK Dr.

GrAT – Center for Appropriate Technology at the Vienna University of Technology. Wiedner Hauptstrasse

8-10. 1040 Vienna, Austria. Phone: ++43 1 58801 49523. Fax: ++43 1 58801 49533. E-mail: contact@grat.at

Monday morning is the workshop started!