Sustainability

Cairn Smuts initiated CS Studio Architects in 1982 in South Africa. The firm has a record of creating innovative and cost effective design solutions. It moves beyond the confines of a conventional architectural practice by adopting an approach that involves all stakeholders in the creative processes of planning, design and construction. Carin is known for her expertise with low cost housing and teaches in workshops, in many universities in South Africa and Namibia. The practice has completed a significant range of projects: multi-purpose centres, small businesses, educational, healthcare, religious, recreational and disabled facilities, in both rural and urban contexts. The scope of their work also includes the restoration of historical monuments. Their approach is always a dynamic one, as they believe that the planning of public environment provides an opportunity for interactive public participation, which produces spaces that reflect people’s effective needs.

Started in Alibaug, Bijoy Jain’s ‘Studio Mumbai’ has evolved from being a studio retreat to define an eclectic urban base. Born in Mumbai in 1965, Bijoy Jain studied in St.Louis, USA and worked for several years with Richard Meier in Los Angeles. The architect considers his practice ‘an experiential journey of witnessing lifestyles and learnings’. For him architecture comes from the subconscious rather than the logical realm, to become overlays of people, places and perceptions. The abstract quality of this descriptive, however, does not highlight the specific methodology of the studio’s work. Jain establishes that these are often before the project starts and the thought processes that arrive as further investigations of the observations. His fascination is from discoveries that come as shifts in these subjects, which to him are the most amazing part of his practice.

Based in Kyoto, Japan, Waro Kishi belongs to the generation of Japanese architects that emerged after Tadao Ando. Although he has acknowledged the influence of the Osaka architect, Kishi has a sensibility, which is all his own. Made primarily of glass and steel rather than massive expanses of concrete like Ando's work, Kishi's buildings are considered by some to be more delicate and subtle, and overall his designs are less driven by iconic forms. A self-described contrarian who preferred the works of such architects as Marcel Bruer and Richard Neutra when others were embracing Postmodernism, Kishi refuses such labels as "Modernist" or "Miesian".

Tadao Ando, unlike most contemporary architects, did not receive any formal architectural schooling and trained himself by reading and traveling extensively through Africa, Europe, and the United States. In 1970, this self-trained architect, out of his experience and learning established Tadao Ando Architect & Associates.
Ando uses materials and forms to incorporate the materialism of modern society into his architecture. He responds both sensitively and critically to the chaotic Japanese urban environment, but maintains a connection to the landscape. Accordingly, his concrete and glass buildings reflect, the modern progress underway in both Japan and the world.
In disagreement with traditional Japanese architecture, Ando creates spaces of enclosure rather than openness. He chooses walls to establish a human zone and to counter the monotony of commercial architecture. On the exterior, the wall deflects the surrounding urban chaos, while on the interior it encloses a private space. Ando developed a radically new architecture characterised by the use of unfinished reinforced concrete structures. Using a geometric simplicity that reveals a subtlety and richness in spatial articulation, Ando has generated an architecture that shares the serenity and clarity that characterise traditional Japanese architecture.