30 NOVEMBER 2023

Come and celebrate our year end party with us. No talks or sponsors, just ‘hanging out’ with APES. A selection of Canapes, wines and beer will be provided, and a cash bar will be available.

26 SEPTEMBER 2023

You are invited to attend APES+ talk titled - Thinking “Product Western Cape”: A Built Environment Perspective, by Deon van Zyl.

These are strange times of austerity, particularly with National Government’s inertia on CapEx projects. Municipalities, however, control their own budgets, and in the Western Cape this means local authorities stepping up and defining “Product Western Cape”, as a number have started to do. However, they can’t – and should not - do this without the input and advice of private sector Built Environment professionals. But although we consult to municipalities and engage with them on a daily basis, we have been extremely undemanding. As a collective, we now need to roll up our sleeves and no longer ask local authorities for permission to be involved in projects; we need to demand that we be allowed to help fix systems from the outside in. If we are not expressing our united voice on this and the urgency now required, then we are just part of the problem.

Deon van Zyl Chairperson, Western Cape Property Development Forum (WCPDF); Managing Director VORTO Deon van Zyl holds a degree in architecture from the University of the Free State, a diploma in project management and a master’s degree in urban design from the University of Cape Town. He cut his teeth in the redevelopment of brownfield land, with exposure to land remediation, and his passion lies in development facilitation through a multi-disciplinary approach. Deon is the Managing Director of the newly formed VORTO, a specialist development management consultancy which is part of the AL&A group of companies focused on the built environment. He has been the Chairperson of the WCPDF since 2011 and is a regular industry commentator, informed by various development industry sub-sectors aligned with the WCPDF.

25 JULY 2023

“More Kissing Frogs?”

Brave visions that have still not seen the light of day.

By Matthew Gray

20 JUNE 2023

You are invited to attend APES+ talk titled “Kissing Frogs!”: The project that never saw the light of day- by Derek Chittenden.

As built environment professionals, we often work long hours on projects (often at risk) that .. for various reasons.. ‘never see the light of day’. This is particularly true for professionals that are at the ‘front end’ of the process, like planners.

APES+ has asked Derek Chittenden to share some of his experiences in this regard over his 40+ years in practice. He has consulted widely to the private and public sectors in South Africa, many African countries, the Indian Ocean Islands and as far afield as Malaysia and Costa Rica.

He will give a snapshot of various projects that he has been involved with in the fields of sustainable development, ecological design, integrated development planning, and urban design. Whilst he has an enviable track record of built projects, there are those that simply never happened. Derek will share some of these, and try to draw some lessons.

Derek Chittenden Derek Chittenden leads ‘BlueGreen planning&design’, an interdisciplinary professional practice specialising in regional planning, sustainable master planning, city planning and urban design, eco-tourism development, site planning and environmental design, project facilitation and development management. The practice is committed to excellence in integrated and regenerative development, ‘natural systems inspired’ planning and design at all scales across the globe. Projects span nine countries in Africa, the Indian Ocean Islands, Malaysia, and Costa Rica.

Derek is founder and retired senior partner and director of ‘CNdV Africa’, a multiple award winning professional practice he established in 1988, which forged, over 20 years with Derek at the helm, a national reputation for excellence in the fields of environmental planning, urban design, landscape architecture, resort and tourism planning and integrated urban, regional and urban structure planning. Derek left CNdV in 2009 to establish ‘BlueGreen’ in order to focus on his particular specialities and interests in the wider arena of international consulting.

His particular interest and experience is at the interface between the built and natural environment, as a master planner, specialist site planner, urban designer and environmental planner. ‘Regenerative’ development and ‘bio-mimetically’ inspired ecological principles of planning, design and management, specifically in the fields of integrated development planning and site level solutions, is a founding principle of the practice, which is committed to solving the contemporary built and natural environmental challenges of the Anthropocene by designing cities and regions informed and inspired by nature's intelligent design, as articulated in the practice of Bio Mimicry.

30 MAY 2023

You are invited to attend APES+ talk titled “Let’s Start with an Earthquake”: A Commentary on Current Seismic Design in South Africa’ by Mark Mallin.

A dozen years have passed since the last major revision to SANS ‘Seismic actions and general approach to buildings’, SANS 10160-4. This talk will take an overview of the code, its background and speculate on the current state of Cape Town’s building infrastructure’s preparedness for a seismic ‘Design Event’.

The background to aspects of the code will be briefly examined with a particular focus on their practical application to typical ‘low-rise’ reinforced concrete shear wall and masonry structures such as schools, apartment blocks and houses. The talk will conclude proposing a simple ‘to-do’ list of how we can potentially improve our society’s collective approach to our seismic risk going forward. Mark Mallin MIStructE.

Mark is a structural engineer with 25 years of experience across a wide range of building structures. He started his career in London & the Middle East then spent a decade with a leading Cape Town based consultant on various projects in Southern Africa & overseas. For the last 9 years with Shape Structures he has worked with various international consultants on the concept, design, analysis and peer review of numerous architecturally driven projects worldwide including detailed design for seismic requirements to Eurocode 8.

1 NOVEMBER 2022

In the seven years since founding Robert Silke & Partners with Robert McGiven and Alex Geh, the practice has notched up a substantial portfolio of major Futurist projects - sometimes mistaken for “Art Deco” in style. Silke will speak to the origins of Art Deco & Futurism in relation to early architectural Modernism - as well as how this has informed the work of the practice and its attitude to style, decoration and traditional city-making principles. Silke articulates his dream of a “Hong Kong future” for the City of Cape Town. Robert Silke “Robert Silke & Partners is one of the most exciting architectural practices in Cape Town.

Silke has described his upbringing in Cape Town as urban and urbane, and has expressed a fascination with the private lives of ordinary buildings. His diverse interests extend into filmmaking. Silke’s remarkable residential conversion of the Art Deco Mutual building in Cape Town is credited with changing the fortunes of its neighbourhood.” - RSA365 by Shaun Gaylard & Brett MacDouga

13 SEPTEMBER 2022

The illustrated talk will attempt to capture the essence of the urban design, architecture, planning, transportation engineering, landscape architecture, street furniture, public spaces & street artwork in these three historically important cities/towns.

Ronald Mathieson Haiden Pr.Eng. APES // 2022 The Society of Architects Planners Engineers and Surveyors+ RSVP to info@apes-ct.co.za by Friday 09 September 2022 Born 1951 in Bloemfontein. Matriculated at Selborne College, East London in 1968. BSc in Civil Engineering, University of Cape Town in 1973 followed by an M Phil in Urban Design & Regional Planning, University of Edinburgh in 1980 and a Graduate Diploma Engineering (GDE) in Transport Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand in 1991. Registered as a Professional Engineer (1976) and has been a Member of SAICE since 1977. Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute from 1992 to 2008.

He has presented papers at many conferences and seminars as well as given lectures in transport engineering at universities. Ron Haiden was awarded the South African Institution of Civil Engineering Chairman’s Award for 2012 for outstanding service to the Transportation Engineering Profession. He was elected as a Fellow of the SAICE on 19 Nov 2014. Ron worked in Cape Town & Port Elizabeth harbours from 1973 to 1978 including 18- month National Service in the Navy based in Simon’s Town. From late 1980 to late 1982 he worked as a Planning Engineer in the General Manager’s Office, SA Transport Services in Johannesburg, followed by 9 months as District Engineer, Reef Construction, South African Transport Services. Ron has always been passionate about applying his interdisciplinary professional education and vision to improve the quality and sustainability of urban life in collaboration with professionals from other built environment professions.

He worked on all aspects of metropolitan scale transport project planning, project evaluation and design in the City of Cape Town and the CMC since July 1983, a municipal career of nearly 33 years. He was responsible for and/or was on steering committees for the seminal Highway Capacity Study, Guidelines for Road Access Management, the Road Toll Policy for CoCT, the Conceptual Design and Economic Evaluation of many road schemes including 30 km of BMT lanes, the new Green Point Circle and Granger Bay Boulevard, the Hospital Bend upgrade, the Koeberg Interchange upgrade, and the review of the Foreshore Freeway scheme completion of the inner viaducts to name but a few. Ron was also responsible, together with interdisciplinary consulting teams, for the conceptual design of over 50 Public Transport Interchanges in the City of Cape Town. Ron was asked to lead the Integrated Rapid Transit Project together with international consultant, Dr Lloyd Wright, in August 2007. Since November 2007 Ron was largely dedicated to the planning, design and construction oversight of the MyCiTi Bus Rapid Transit Infrastructure. This project involved the creative inter-disciplinary co-operation between all the built environment professionals as well as BRT operational specialists and the various operators. The vision was to plan, design, implement and operate an Integrated Rapid Transit System that was car-competitive, efficient, operationally effective, environmentally sustainable, universally accessible, restored dignity to passengers and gave them a degree of delight but was also affordable to all income groups, allowed easy transfers, enjoyed a cost recovery percentage which performed well in comparison with international norms and reduced potential fare evasion to a minimum. It is smart and elegant and has contributed very positively towards improving urban design quality as well as built environment certainty, which has urban developers’ and property owners’ confidence and has increased property values. This confidence and transport/urban design quality has already resulted in some substantial new developments and increasing urban densities closer to the MyCiTi routes, stations and stops.

Since retiring from the City of Cape Town on 31 May 2016, Ron has worked on the large inter-disciplinary professional team led by MDA, which won the bid to redevelop the Cape Town Foreshore for housing and related land uses and complete the essential elements of the Foreshore Freeway without requiring any public funding. It is regrettable that this project has been cancelled, for the time being

2 AUGUST 2022

The climate action pressure group ‘Extinction Rebellion’ did not mince it words when publicly challenging the CEO of Media 24 to ramp up the group’s reporting on climate change and ‘tell the truth’ about this unfolding global catastrophe.

Gathering with banners and placards outside Media 24’s Foreshore building on 22 April, they criticised the language used by the press, radio and TV in its climate-reporting as being ‘too abstract’.

Terms such as ‘biodiversity’ should be simplified to ‘natural life’ when referring to plants and animals, and ‘biodiversity loss’ had to be replaced with ‘destruction of nature’. Clear, to the point and punchy.

Do you agree, and does this criticism extend to our use of the terms ‘biodiversity’ and ‘ecosystems’ in the context of development planning and environmental assessment? Is there anything that should be done to use language so that it enlightens instead of obfuscating crucial concepts and their implications for ‘sustainable development’? This session will be more about kindling thoughts than, as Socrates is believed to have said, filling passive vessels with knowledge (bound to be forgotten somewhere between the venue and the turn of a starter motor).

CHARL DE VILLIERS, a former journalist, sometimes-university-lecture and environmental consultant who spent four years in the ‘biodiversity sector’ at Kirstenbosch, will lead an illustrated discussion on what we understand by ‘biodiversity, its relevance to our professional lives and what could help to bring jargon such as ‘biodiversity mainstreaming’ to life for architects, planners, engineers and surveyors. He is a Registered Environmental Assessment Practitioner with more than 20 years’ experience, gained almost exclusively in agricultural settings in the Western Cape ‘platteland’. He led the Botanical Society of SA’s ‘Biodiversity in EIA’ project from 2004 to 2009, contributed to the 2005 and 2016 editions of the ‘Fynbos Forum Ecosystem Guidelines for Environmental Assessment in the Western Cape’, acted as biodiversity mainstreaming adviser to the agricultural component of SANBI’s national grasslands programme and led the team that drafted the Sandveld Environmental Management Framework on behalf of the Western Cape government. Charl wrote a chapter on land-use planning and impact assessment for the book ‘Fynbos: Ecology and Management’ (Esler et al., 2014), served as the IAIAsa’s Western Cape branch chairperson in 2006/2007 and participated in the Sandveld Forum, the Land-use Task Team of the C.A.P.E. programme and Agri Western Cape’s Natural Resources Policy Committee. He studied philosophy, political philosophy and journalism at Stellenbosch and was awarded an MPhil in environmental management by the University of Cape Town.

He is married with two daughters and lives in Vredehoek, Cape Town.

24 MAY 2022

The talk is about the 3 primary rock types found in earth, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary, and they all occur in the City Bowl. I discuss where the rocks are found in geological time and some of the main events in South African Geology.

The presentation then looks at the location of a few quarries where the different rocks are found and then focus on some of the important buildings in Cape Town that have been built with the various rock types. I also explore a few significant rocks not found in Cape Town but used in some of the significant buildings in the CBD.

Tommy Brümmer Tommy Brümmer Townplanners B.Sc. M(TRP) Pr. Planner A/281/1985

I was born in the middle of the Great Karoo and spent my first 7 years in the small town of Carnarvon. Schooled at Wynberg Boys High and then off to Stellenbosch to study geology. After doing a few student vacation jobs in mines and exploration work near Pofader I decided that Town Planning sounded a much better profession. I have been a planning consultant in Cape Town since 1985, but still enjoy geology and the landscapes that are created by the different rock formations. Since moving to the Bo-Kaap my interest in rocks was rekindled when I realised that the cobbles are made of sandstone, the pavements are granite and the old walls are constructed of metamorphosed shales. The perfect use of surrounding materials.

29 MARCH 2022

Bridget O’Donoghue works as a Heritage Practitioner, primarily in the Western Cape.

She has been involved in the City of Cape Town’s developments on the Sea Point and Mouillie Point Promenades since 2015. The initial phase was a Heritage Impact Assessment report in consultation with Architect and Heritage Practitioner Peter Buttgens.

The presentation on the upgrades to the Sea Point and Mouillie Point Promenades explores the cultural significances of this important site and the various developments that have occurred over the past 7 years and that are currently planned

8 MARCH 2022

John Maynard Keynes said: ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist’

In South Africa one could say that there are three big issues facing built environment professionals and contractors.

1. The cyclical nature of conventional construction - its feast and famine.

2. The dynamite nature of rural depopulation coupled with informal settlements and joblessness.

3. And municipalities that are going broke. One can imagine what those in power might be thinking: ‘what do we do? we cant get enough taxes, we cant supply enough jobs, our economic theories are….. what?, and people are getting angry.’ The question arises: is there a way to stimulate and strengthen economic activity in an equitable way, which rewards hard work, and which does not have negative effects?

There is a school of thought which says that the answers lie beneath our feet, in the way that we administer land, and that “rental collection in a magical way encourages production everywhere, as opposed to taxation, which is not only a burden to economic activity, but positively obliterates it in marginal locations such as in the poorer South African rural areas” (Stephen Meintjes. Our Land, Our Rent, Our Jobs)

Kevin McShannon, MBT Architects and Project Managers. HND Construction Management (1987) Worked in construction industry in SA for 20 years. Working in an architectural partnership since 2003. Economics with Justice tutor