Water innovation takes centre stage as clay brick manufacturer and distributor Corobrik recognises the excellence of graduating students in the University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) Master of Landscape Architecture programme.


The yearly Landscape Architecture Awards encourages innovative ideas that motivate social cohesion and environmentally responsible habitation.


“South Africa has so much architectural talent and this is evidenced by the extensively researched dissertations produced this year,” says Corobrik commercial director Musa Shangase, highlighting the “elevated level” of design displayed by this year’s graduating class.


The 2019 Corobrik Most Innovative Final Year Landscape Architecture Award winner was Josephine Dalberg for a thesis entitled ‘A River Remembered: Reconnecting to Landscape, Memory and Resource through Water Routes’.


This thesis investigates the possibility of rerouting an existing concrete water channel through a “Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) community”, allowing resi­dents from a disadvantaged community to access water for food gardens and the greening of their environment.


“The existing water channel currently bypasses an RDP community situated on the periphery of [Clanwilliam]. This water, from the Jan Dissels river, is instead piped into the town centre, where it is revealed in an open leiwater,” she explains.


The rerouting concept, she explains, will create the opportunity to develop both household and community gardens, as well as sites of social engagement between the RDP community and the town centre.


Amber Myers secured the second-place prize for her thesis, ‘Perceiving Landscape: Designing for the Contemplation of Material Culture through Time’, which proposes the construction of a coastal park and archaeological museum on the Point of Mossel Bay using materials harvested from buildings that will be submerged by the rising ocean over time.


All graduating students in the UCT Master of Landscape Architecture programme are eligible for Corobrik’s Most Innovative Final Year Landscape Architecture Award.