The 21st century, frequently termed the post-industrial era, is marked by the devastating consequences of unsustainable industrial production, unlimited consumption, and boundless waste. The proposed scheme from Pretoria redefines understandings of industry by proposing a new system of resource exchanges between specific production processes.

The submitted design, for example, explores synergies between a textile manufacturing facility, agricultural fields, and a sewage treatment plant to create what the author calls a Machinarium of mutually interrelated systems and subsystems, all working together to create a sustainable environment.

The project thereby explores new architectural typologies which may transform the future of cities. Industry becomes a regenerative urban catalyst that blurs present-day distinctions between social, productive, and natural space.

Read project feature in 4th Holcim Awards 2014/2015 (flip-book)

The Next Generation 3rd prize-winning project of Heidi van Eeden from the University of Pretoria, South Africa questions architecture in the 21st century: how we make space, how we use waste, and how we can build sustainable cities in a rapidly-changing environment. “Machinarium: Regenerative urban catalyst and textile production” in Pretoria, South Africa explores synergies between a textile manufacturing facility, agricultural fields, and a sewage treatment plant to create mutually-interrelated systems and subsystems, all working together in a sustainable environment – exploring new architectural typologies which may transform the future of cities. 

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The twelve winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East focus mainly on enhancing social and environmental resilience, as well as the economy of construction. The winning submissions show how multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing design and building are being developed. A green building in Turkey, an urban forest rehabilitation in Lebanon, and a low-cost housing plan in Ethiopia received the top prizes.

The jury admired the freshness of the scheme’s underlying hypothesis as well as its translation into architecture. Particularly valued was the project’s bold proposition to understand the city as a type of “self-sustaining” machine in which one component feeds the other – a collection of superimposed eco-systems in a state of equilibrium. Notwithstanding its utopian facets, the design proposal frames a valuable discussion on potential forms of relationship between the constructed and natural environment, offering the grounds for understanding the art of building as a practice in symbiotic relation with nature.

The 21st century, frequently termed the post-industrial era, is marked by the devastating consequences of unsustainable industrial production, unlimited consumption, and boundless waste. The proposed scheme from Pretoria, redefines understandings of industry by proposing a new system of resource exchanges between specific production processes.