PPC Imaginarium Awards takes over Des Baker Award

Architecture schools in South Africa have been invited to send in submissions for the first PPC Imaginarium Awards for Architecture

, being held on May 3, at 012Central, Pretoria.

Following the same format of the esteemed Des Baker Award for outstanding architectural design by students, which has been terminated by its sponsors after 32 years, the new PPC Imaginarium Awards for Architecture will be held yearly, and will remain a standalone event that is held separately from the rest of the PPC Imaginarium Awards.The work of all entrants will be displayed at the Architecture ZA 2018 (AZA18) conference from May 3 to 5.

The theme of AZA18 is ‘WeTheCity: Memory & Resilience’. Focus points will include heritage, human settlements and environmental potential, all of which complement the main focus of the 2018 PPC Imaginarium Awards for Architecture.The Des Baker Award allowed students to explore meaningful, practical change in their city by designing an array of small interventions. The two best projects from each institution were selected by an institution’s lecturers and submitted.

Students in their final year of undergraduate study receive the brief and are required to complete it as part of their qualification. Past finalists in this category highlighted various issues, such as heritage, movement, tradition, communication and modernity.This year’s entrants have been instructed to find sites where rapid growth has led to unoccupied space, demolition, ‘memory spaces’ and infrastructural gaps in cities.Each educational institution will select its entrants internally, and their work will be put on display at AZA18.