Green Architect: Luyanda Mpahlwa

Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by admin in Personality Profiles

Designing the future

Luyanda Mpahlwa has travelled a great deal since his birth in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. His personal and professional journey has confronted ideologies, crossed continents and spanned diverse creative visions of people within spaces. Regarded as “inspirational” by his peers, his architectural ideas reflect a clarity of vision that meld economic imperatives with social transformation and a desire to contribute to the development of South Africa in his chosen field. All the work that he has been involved in demonstrates a strong commitment to ensuring that the architectural projects reflect the country’s diversity of cultural experience in the processes, materials and designs.

Luyanda Mpahlwa is the founder member of mma’s Cape Town Studio, an architectural company identified with innovative and home-grown design solutions. This softly spoken man’s overt gentleness belies a strength of character that has resulted in a career loaded with accolades. After a 12year partnership at mma, Luyanda is now in the process of launching a new Architectural brand: Luyanda Mpahlwa DesignSpaceAfrica (Pty) Ltd – to be celebrated later in the year.

So what motivated the decision for a young Black man from Mthatha to study architecture at a time when just owning a home for most African people was an impossible dream?

“Apartheid was oppressive but also created opportunities at the same time! I was fortunate to be guided by my parents who encouraged me to pursue engineering courses at University level. My father was of the view that therein lay the key skills to drive the economy of the country, and my mother remembered that I liked drawing houses on my slate as a child! Since Architecture and Engineering were not allowed for Black students under Apartheid, that actually encouraged me to study exactly that and I sought all the permission required from Government at the time, to achieve that! I do not regret the decision and the guidance I received.”

In the late 70’s, Luyanda studied architecture at the University of Natal and Natal Technikon before being imprisoned for 5 years for anti-apartheid political activities in 1981. After his release from Robben Island in 1986, he went into exile to Germany and completed his M.Sc/Dipl.-Ing. in architecture at the Technical University of Berlin. For the next 14 years, Germany was home, where he witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall and the relocation of its capital from Bonn. In 2000, Luyanda returned to SA because he “had always cherished the idea of returning home from exile, and contributing towards the rebuilding of the country living under the democracy I had sacrificed my youth for. I also felt a sense of personal achievement to see the peace and the progress the country was making post the 1994 elections. At that time, I had made sure I was back home, in Mthatha and felt part of the historic moment.”

Since then he has worked on a series of projects that have allowed him to translate his notions of creating spaces for people that affirmed their cultures, traditions and creativity. Luyanda was the co-initiator of the South African Embassy project in Berlin, the first time that a major architectural commission was given to a Black company by the new South African government. This building was awarded the Award of Excellence by the South African Institute of Architects in 2003.

Whether designing a school, an embassy or urban spaces, his design ethos is people-centred. In a landscape of pseudo-European Tuscan Villas and Provencal design, the buildings and projects he has been involved stand out and reflect a South African –ness that is not a tacked-on crudity, but an essential and central aspect of the overall design. He describes his design ethos as wanting to “elevate African inspired design at all levels.”

Last year he received a Curry Stone Design Award from the University of Kentucky USA for the Design Indaba’s 10 x 10 low cost housing project where 10 local and international architects were paired with 10 families to build experimental homes on the government subsidy budget of R 50,000 in the township of Freedom Park, Mitchells Plein Cape Town. The project was also finalist in the prestigious 2009 INDEX Awards in Copehagen.

As creative director for the project, his winning design was inspired by traditional, low cost mud-and-wattle building techniques. Luyanda’s design team opted for the use of sandbags combined with a timber frame structure – EcoBeams – to build a double story house for the Jonker family. Cost effective, green friendly, architecturally creative, it was space for an impoverished family to live with dignity. Due to the success of the sandbag design, Luyanda was commissioned to build all 10 low cost houses in Freedom Park. No other architect had managed to fulfil the brief given by Design Indaba. These houses have now been completed and families moved in July 2009.

Luyanda is a busy man. Apart from running a 20 member design office, serving on a number of advisory committees, he currently serves as a technical advisor for the construction of all 10 stadiums for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

He is married and lives in Cape Town with his wife and children.