Amy Thompson, a University of Cape Town (UCT) architectural student, was the winner of this year’s Corobrik Most Innovative Final Year Landscape Architecture Project award.

Her thesis, titled We are Europe, critiques the perception of informality within the city by addressing failings in policy and legislation to allow for better informal settlement upgrade to occur.

“It is my hope that, by challenging the perception of informality and providing the socio-economic facilities called for within policy, the physical and symbolic boundaries separating the formal and informal parts of the city will be dismantled,” she explains.

Corobrik’s Manager Western Cape, Christie van Niekerk, says that this award, which is now in its fourth year has, more than ever, demonstrated how up and coming architects are grappling with the idiosyncrasies and diversity of South Africa’s unique built environment and using the tools at their disposal to interrogate and transform the world as we know it 20 years after achieving democracy.

One of the chief challenges facing local and provincial government, in particular, is urban sprawl which unfortunately tends to reinforce historic spatial, economic and social divides rather than address social and economic needs and cultural development.

“You can’t address (the issues surrounding informality) through building RDP houses,” Thompson believes.

“The aim of this thesis is to investigate new ways in which informal settlements within South Africa can be upgraded on an ad hoc, in-situ basis and create a land tenure system for the community based on its existing evolved physical and social structure.

“Keeping everyone within 50m of where they currently live allows for socio-economic facilities and future high density development to occur,” she explains.

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