Architectural Writers and Critics Award

Professor Iain Low from UCT’s School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics – and editor of the annual Digest of South African Architecture – received the 2017 South African Institute of Architects Architectural Writers and Critics Award at an event held on Thursday, 23 November.  

The award is made in recognition of a distinguished contribution to architectural criticism and/or writing.  

In his keynote address, Minister of Public Works Nkosinathi Nhleko said, “The profession has a critical role in preserving and ensuring that our architecture reflects our African identity, its evolution as well as who we are as a people.”  

He added that as our society transforms politically, socially and culturally, architects need to be at the forefront of trying to imagine what our future could be, based on the interpretation of our past.  

In his acceptance speech Low said, “Essentially each of us have the unique obligation of writing ourselves and our collective communities back into the world through the disciplines that we have come to practice. And nowhere can this be a more potent task than in architecture – through the transformation of the spatial legacy that the many centuries of colonial overwriting has wrought on the earth.”  


 

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