Prototyping as Circular Practice

In 2024 Booyens's practice was selected as one of four case studies in a University of Pretoria research report by Celine Nel, examining prototyping as a tool for more circular design in the South African built environment. Drawing on an interview with Booyens and an analysis of the Buffelsdrift work, the study places his hands-on, experimental method within a wider argument about how architects test the appropriateness of an innovation before committing to it — and how that testing, rather than the drawing, becomes the real design work.

The report characterises his approach as craft-mode: a critical engagement with materials, techniques tested on and off site rather than resolved in advance. Grounded in carpentry, welding, brick-laying and earthen construction, Booyens is described as an architect who "advocates embracing calculated risks and using mistakes as learning opportunities" — one who works from a "kit of details," analogue and digital, developed alongside the concept and only then sized to the building, so that the knowledge earned in one project carries into the next.

The Buffelsdrift pump room is read as the central case — a structural and aesthetic prototype at once. Booyens convinced the client to invest in a series of brick vaults built without formwork, cost-effectively and sustainably; the study traces the technique back to the Damaraland Clay Project (2005–06), where clay vaults were built with mud mortar and flat tiles, eliminating any sacrificial support work. Each prototype, built at full 1:1 scale, fed the next, and taught client and labourers alike that the hand-based, formwork-free vault was possible.

The study also records the constraint that shapes the work. Asked about prototyping, Booyens observes: "It's appropriate, but it's not affordable." The tension — shared across the profession — between the value of testing and the cost of it is, in his practice, answered by the accumulation of tacit knowledge: prototypes built slowly over years that eventually make the difficult thing quick.

Nel, C. (2024). A critical analysis of the value of prototyping as part of a circular design process in the South African built environment. Research report, DIT 801, Department of Architecture, University of Pretoria. Supervisor: C. Bothma. Jaco Booyens is discussed as a case study (§4.3.1, pp. 52–55).

Architectural Alchemy

Reproduced in full, as written. The author's footnotes are numbered as in the original and collected at the foot of the page. The original's twelve figures are reproduced in place, at the resolution at which they are embedded in the author's document, with their captions as written.

Jaco Booyens was born in Pretoria on 17 April 1969. He spent his early years wandering in the veld on the eastern outskirts of Pretoria near his parents' home in Constantia Park. It was here where he first encountered structures that were made out of the surrounding earth; besides observing the extensive scattering of termite mounds, a small number of modest man-made structures also caught his attention¹: He was surprised by their "stubbornness to survive"² and he felt compelled to attempt to repair one of these dilapidated and abandoned clay houses, and despite having to abandon this ambition at the time due to technical difficulties³, little did he suspect that later in his life, he would become known for his structural innovation and his knowledge of natural earth construction.

Early influences and education

His mother married his stepfather, the mathematician Professor Niko Sauer, when Booyens was five years old. He describes his stepfather as an eccentric mathematician, scientist, electronics expert and amateur botanist, and he acknowledges him as one of his biggest influences⁴. He suspects that his own interest in science and the observation of fine detail must, in part, be ascribed to his formative influence.

During his schooling at the Hoërskool Waterkloof in Pretoria, Booyens spent much of his time making observational drawings of animals and plants, citing the encouragement he received from his art teacher Verona Higgs. He wished to be in nature, and he was considering studies in nature conservation before his stepfather informed him that the University of Pretoria was offering a new programme called Landscape Architecture under Professor Willem van Riet. This, he felt, might offer him the opportunity for combining his love of nature with that of design. Booyens enrolled for this programme. During his first year of study he attended Professor Roger Fisher's Omgewingsgeskiedenis⁵ course. He also met a number of architecture students and he remembers being fascinated with a white-line drawing by Marcus Smit and by Pierre Swanepoel's final year project of a Genetic Research Centre⁶. After completing his first year of Landscape Architecture, he switched to study architecture.

He acknowledges the influence that Professors Schalk le Roux, Roger Fisher and Joe Kemp (who he describes as a "technical guy with common sense"⁷) had on his development. Le Roux encouraged him to take a year out between his third and fourth years, during which time he went to work for Erhard Roxin Architects in Swakopmund, Namibia⁸ before returning to his studies at the University of Pretoria. Here he notes that he had some differences with the then Head of Department Professor Dieter Holm, but he says that Holm's course Gebouklimaat⁹ triggered something in him: It made him realise that a building can be made like an animal or a plant in order to fit into a specific habitat¹⁰.

This concept must have resonated with some of his childhood experiences in the Richtersveld, which is where Booyens suspects that his love of the desert began¹¹. Booyens' mother's family was originally from Kakamas¹², and the Sauer-Booyens family often went to the Richtersveld to visit them, and to look for plants. His stepfather's botanical passion centered on lithops (succulents also known as living stones)¹³, which are endemic to the Richtersveld. These plants have adapted to survive in the extremes of dry climates. They, typically, have two bulbous leaves that, in form and colour, resemble stones found in their natural environment. This environmental mimicry reduces the likelihood of the plants being eaten, but it is also what gives them their natural beauty. These tiny plants seem to personify Booyens' philosophy that only through an immersion into an extreme environment, can an equally heightened response be developed.

Contextual confrontations

Booyens remarks that with his final year project he "militantly" wanted to prove that a building should fit into its context like an animal or a plant¹⁴. This approach would be repeated in some of later projects, including the Vertical Village on the River Tiber which he designed during his time as a Rome scholar in Italy¹⁵. He says an extreme environment elevates one's response to an equally extreme level and hence he worked on the possibility of an apocalyptic event for his thesis. His final year project was entitled Noodsentrum vir Aardbewings¹⁶, and it was an earthquake-resistant building situated on the San Andreas fault in San Francisco. The building's programme was an emergency hospital and logistics centre, and Booyens refers to it as a "hibernating robot"¹⁷: It would harvest solar energy by way of photovoltaic panels and store this energy in capacitors (which meant they could be charged slowly over time, and that a large amount of energy could be released rapidly when needed). In the event of an earthquake, sensors would cause the hibernating building to "wake up", the capacitors would release their energy to activate large magnets that would essentially allow the building to levitate just long enough to survive the quake and its aftershocks. A system of hydraulics to adjust the building's structure depending on different frequencies, and Teflon-coated slides below the building's supports would further augment its responsiveness. It was an experiment in self-sufficiency, and besides harvesting its own energy, a natural wetland underneath the building would act as a biofilter and water storage device. His examiners described the project as "A technological fantasy of a sophisticated nature bordering on industrial design and engineering"¹⁸, a description that is also applicable to much of his later work.

After approaching the South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE) a number of times, he finally got the opportunity to go to Antarctica in 2003. He designed a logistics centre for the Antarctic Logistics Company International (ALCI) which was never built, but the experience served as a bridge between his thesis and his later work; he was struck by the conditions in Antarctica, especially in terms of the environment which he experienced as having "completely different rules" to most other places. The equipment and structures there highlighted the importance of engineering for him, and they demonstrate how environmental circumstances can dictate the "look" of a building.

Early career

After completing his BArch degree cum laude in 1996, he did private work for a year before returning to Namibia to work for Bob Mould Architects¹⁹. His first project at the practice was the Namport Container Terminal Entrance in Walvis Bay, which he worked on with Conrad Scheffer. Booyens proposed a steel-framed roof covered with a stretched fabric, but due to the highly corrosive environment the design was developed further to make use of a structurally efficient reinforced concrete roof²⁰. The building received an Award of Merit from the Namibia Institute of Architects in 1999.

He did some work for Knolles Green, a former Roxin employee, before going to work on the construction of film sets as a carpenter. During 1998 he worked on the construction of a set in the desert east of Swakopmund near Rössing that resembled a town during the First World War. This experience led him to believe that construction is easy, a belief that would be tested a number of times later in his career.

At the beginning of 1999 he returned to South Africa where he was invited by Albrecht Holm and Ferdinand Holm to participate in Project Phoenix for Holm Jordaan and Partners²¹ in 1999. This was a two-stage design competition for new premises for the then Pretoria Municipality²² after the Munitoria building partly burnt down in 1997. They won the competition with a building that was predominantly designed with passive climate control in mind. Light-shelves, large glass-roofed atrium spaces with delicate steel structures and slim elevated water tanks stand out as key features of the design, which was never built²³.

He then went to work in Knysna, South Africa, at Chris Mulder and Associates Incorporated²⁴ until 2001 when he entered and won the South African Institute of Architects' prestigious Rome Scholarship. He spent nine months in Rome and while Bernini's sculptures and Caravaggio's paintings made the biggest impression on him during his stay there, the buildings that did fascinate him were the Pantheon and the Colosseum. He remarks that "Rome displays to a person what time is"²⁵: He is of the opinion that many modern buildings are only made from hard materials and he observed that older buildings and structures like the Pantheon and Colosseum were made from hard and soft materials that weather differently. He compares their materiality to bone, tissue and skin, and he carefully studied the ancient Roman walls that were made from layers of earth and inward-angling stone slabs. This discovery, along with his childhood experience with clay buildings, his love of the desert as well as the onset of an opportune moment, eventually led him back to Namibia where he would begin to experiment with earth construction in earnest.

Building with the earth

Booyens claims that his passion for earthen construction is not because he is a hippie or has any Bohemian tendencies [this is open to debate!], but due to the abundance of earth, the low level of skill required in its construction, and its low carbon footprint. He cannot understand why, if earth is such an obvious choice as a building material, it is not being used more often. While he acknowledges that building height and space constraints are often problems with the use of thick earthen walls, he argues that one only has to understand earth's material properties and constraints - as with those of any other building material²⁶ - as a material suitable for low-rise buildings within an appropriate context.

Booyens saw vaults that the architect Frenus Rorich designed for his holiday accommodation establishment in Swakopmund, Namibia in 1994 and he recalls that "Toe ek daai goed sien is ek verlief"²⁷. He also discovered other experiments with earthen construction in Namibia during his first stay there in 1994 like the ones by Wiebke Volkmann in Henties Bay²⁸, and he eventually got his chance to build with earth in northwestern Namibia in 2005. The Damaraland Clay Project was situated in the Sorris Sorris Conservancy and it was a project that he designed and built with long-time friend and collaborator Johannes Haasbroek²⁹. The buildings were built with sun-dried clay bricks that were made on site with material obtained from within a radius of thirty kilometers. A free-vaulting technique was used without formwork and approximately sixty local community members were trained and employed during construction. Regrettably, the buildings did not survive due to water damage at an unfortunate time of unseasonal tropical monsoon rains that had moved southwards, funding constraints and unresolved political difficulties³⁰.

Booyens collaborated with Haasbroek again on the design and construction of Haasbroek's own house which is suitably named Gaia³¹ (also referred to as Fort Haasbroek³²) near Swakopmund, Namibia. This time they made use of 600mm thick rammed earth walls. Suitable material was found within five kilometres of the site in the form of compactable soil that is typically used as sub-base for road construction. This material was initially mixed with 5% cement, but it was found that the cement was not needed due to the natural clay content in the material and its inherent stability³³. The roof is made of 100mm thick ferro-cement vaults, while the Spanish Oak columns are salvaged piles that washed up on the shore after an oyster platform was destroyed by a storm. Material properties and climate drove the design, but this resulted in significant cost savings³⁴. The house is designed to be self-sufficient with photovoltaic panels, a biogas digester, a borehole, a water treatment facility, and an aquaponics system³⁵.

Booyens' desire to repair earth buildings came full circle when he was appointed to renovate and repair six modest farm buildings on Buffelsdrift Farm³⁶ near Ladismith, South Africa in 2019. After removing several different layers of plaster, he discovered that several of the damaged old structures on the farm were built using the poured earth method (as opposed to the more common practice of using sun-dried clay bricks). These were repaired using clay that was collected from the dry irrigation dam, which seems to have been the source of the clay for the original buildings too³⁷. Once the initial structural renovations were completed, he proceeded to design and build a staircase in the old tobacco store. This highly tectonic assemblage (similar to a number of other tectonic assemblies that he has designed and built) stands in stark contrast to the steoreotomic nature of the existing structures, and it shows that he is comfortable to design and make, using both of these modes of production.

Steoreotomics, tectonics and material efficiency

Booyens' ability to work both stereotomically and tectonically is evident in another project on Buffelsdrift Farm, where he had the chance to design and build experimental catenary shell structures made from sun-dried clay bricks on a new pump room. He admits that shell structures have become an "obsessive interest"³⁹ for him, and he is convinced that they can be built cost-effectively using unskilled labour. The shell structures on Buffelsdrift Farm were combined with complex split steel beams with vertical flanges that allow natural daylight to flood into the space between the vaults, while the vaults themselves will be covered with soil and planting. Poured earth was used for the 1,2 metre thick gable walls and steel tension rods were used to counteract the shallow vaults' lateral thrust.

His professional influences are equally balanced: On the stereotomic side he mentions Hassan Fathy, Félix Candela⁴⁰ and Rafael Guastavino⁴¹; on the tectonic side he mentions Nicholas Grimshaw⁴² and Renzo Piano⁴³. He notes that the common denominator between all of these architects' work is an intensive investigation into material properties and possibilities. In Booyens' opinion, material suitability and efficiency are the key to any project. If one material cannot do something, he uses a different one. This requires some fleet-footedness, but he states that, similar to those architects whose work he admires, all of his projects are investigations into what a specific material can do in a specific application. He argues that if one can emphasise a material's inherent properties by using it as efficiently as possible, one does not have to bother too much with aesthetics since a pleasing appearance will result naturally; the climate, structural properties, and connections between materials become the determinants of the appearance of the building. His partner, the artist Hanneke Benade, often reminds him that he cannot only be focused on utility, but he insists that aesthetics lie in material efficiency⁴⁴.

Since his thesis project, material efficiency has been combined with the notion of self-sufficiency. The Oxford English dictionary describes efficiency as "the ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in", while sufficiency is described as "an adequate amount of something, especially of something essential". Alessi⁴⁵ describes Booyens' architecture as "the result of a series of careful considerations regarding a self-sustainable use of energy, the efficient functioning of the natural systems of energy supply, the implications of low impact technology on the environment". Booyens wanted to be autonomous and self-sufficient himself, and his search for the essential motivated him to purchase a piece of land in the foothills of the Langeberg between Montagu and Barrydale. It became a long-term research and development project where he spends a great deal of time researching various systems and techniques on the internet before experimenting further on his own⁴⁶. He admits that he is a "nuuskierige agie"⁴⁷, that he becomes nervous or fearful if he does not understand something, but that that trait always makes him even more determined in his quest. He constantly challenges himself and he admits the struggle to establish his farm pushed him to his limits: He once said "Die volgende sukses is nie om geld te hê nie, maar tyd⁴⁸", but sadly his efforts on the farm deprived him of both for quite some time. He says the experience made him feel like and artist and an athlete⁴⁹: He designed and built his own wind turbine, installed a ram-pump to get fresh water from a nearby stream, he implemented a series of permaculture initiatives, and he designed and built all of the structures on the property. He refers to his own house as an "architectural shack"⁵⁰ and he dryly remarks "Dit is 'n maaksel. Dis nie regtig 'n plek waar ordentlike mense sal wil woon nie"⁵¹.

He designed and built this 'shack' almost single-handedly (except for three labourers who were employed for three months only) using poured earth walls in combination with delicate steel trusses that support recycled roof sheets covered with local stones⁵². A 1950s Lister engine that was converted to run on used vegetable oil provided electricity until photovoltaic panels could be installed. Fortunately, the use of vegetable oil was not new to him: Having converted his bakkie⁵³ himself to run on used vegetable oil which he collected from restaurants in Cape Town, he drove to Swakopmund in Namibia, not considering the comparative lack of restaurants there. This resulted in him having to resort to using seal oil obtained from seals that were culled at the Cape Cross seal colony north of the town. This did enable him to make the trip back to Cape Town, although a small leak in the 500 litre rooftop tanks left a number of people en route puzzled by a curious fish smell that seemed to linger all the way from Swakopmund to Cape Town⁵⁴.

While his stepfather taught him the value of struggling with problems, Booyens says the work on Rysmierberg made him realise "Daar is nie genoeg breins in een kop nie"⁵⁵. There exists a tension between Booyens' desire to live autonomously and not to be reliant on others and the fact that he seems to gravitate towards collaborations with other architects and like-minded people. While these collaborations are sometimes marked by friction, he thrives on them and seems to produce his most successful work through them: Besides the collaborations with Haasbroek, Holm, Holm, and Truen as mentioned previously, he designed and installed a multi-storey shading system on the National Prosecuting Authority's building in Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, for DHK Architects, and he installed one on the Graça Machel Women's Residence⁵⁶ building at the University of Cape Town in 2007 as a subcontractor to Gutco Manufacturing for KrugerRoos Architects. He also collaborated with André Eksteen of Earthworld Architects and Interiors on the innovative plywood structure at the Future Africa Innovation Campus' dining hall⁵⁷ in 2018.

Of alchemy and science

Jaco Booyens is a maker of artefacts. He generates his designs through an intensive observation of nature and materials, and his work may be regarded as biomimicry by some. In his own manifesto, he writes "Nature does not intend to be beautiful. It is focused on survival by accurate problem solving" and he argues that a mutualistic relationship should be formed between buildings and nature through the process of design.⁵⁸ The drawings that he made of animals and plants as a child now strangely resonate in his experimentations with parametric design software. He spends much of his time experimenting with digital software to find efficient structural geometries and patterns and he unconsciously he seems to be getting closer to nature itself by doing this: His recent experimentations in Grasshopper are strangely reminiscent of the lithops that his stepfather was so fascinated with.

Several early experiences weave like threads through Booyens' career: His early engagement with termite mounds and clay buildings, the lithops that he learnt about from his stepfather, his fascination with machines, and his architectural collaborations seem to develop and re-emerge continuously in a cyclical fashion throughout his life, improving after each subsequent revolution. He recognizes the diversity in his own body of work, but he argues that it reinforces the notion that every project is rooted in a specific contextual response. His innovations and inventions are not incidental but consistently regular, and they are both understood through and generated by context, before being turned into architectural expression.

Alchemy refers to the transmutation of matter, where a base material is turned into gold. This can very well be said of Booyens' work, especially where the earth is literally raised up to be turned into objects of a high order. Taking a basic brief or palette of materials and transforming it into something valuable, beautiful, and unexpected – perhaps that is the essence of architecture.

References

• Alessi, A. 2002. Strangers at home. Strategies for a non-habitual inhabitance in Rome. In British School in Rome. 2002. Fine Arts 2001-2002. Catalogue. London: The British School at Rome. [Online] Available: www.albertoalessi.com/files/t-2002-SH-t.pdf (Accessed 2 December 2019)
• Booyens, J. 2019. Manifesto. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/design-philosophy.html (Accessed 2 December 2019)
• Booyens, J. 2002. News from a Rome scholar. In SA Architect, March/April 2002: 15.
• Booyens, J. 2019a. Telephonic communication. 31 October 2019.
• Booyens, J. 2019b. Personal interview, conducted in Cape Town by Michael Louw on 7 November 2019.
• Booyens, J. 2019c. Personal interview, conducted in Cape Town by Michael Louw on 17 November 2019.
• Fischer, T. 2014. "Krag uit die aarde⁵⁹". In Weg! Platteland, Autumn 2014, number 2: 122-127.
• Haasbroek, J. 2019. Personal interview, conducted in Swakopmund by Michael Louw on 9 November 2019.

Awards

1. 1998. Winner of Project Phoenix with Ferdinand Holm and Albrecht Holm for Holm Jordaan and Partners (now New Urban Architects and Urban Designers). This was a national, open two-stage competition for the design of the new Municipal buildings in Pretoria after the previous buildings were partly destroyed by fire.
2. 1999. Winner of an Award of Merit from the Namibia Institute of Architects with Conrad Scheffer on behalf of Bob Mould Architects (now Conrad Scheffer Architects) for the Namport Container Entrance in Walvis Bay, Namibia.
3. 2001. Winner of the South African Institute of Architects' Rome Scholarship.

Notes

1. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
2. Booyens, J. 2019. Contemporary mud house, Buffelsdrift. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/contemporary-mud-house-buffelsdrift.html (Accessed 4 December 2019) ↩
3. These include, amongst others, his tender age, a lack of knowledge and tools, and construction delays caused by him having to roll water to site by himself one drum at a time. ↩
4. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
5. Environmental History. ↩
6. Smit is a founder of Marcus Smit Jacobs Architects and Swanepoel is a founder of StudioMAS Architecture and Urban Design. ↩
7. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
8. Here he took over from Henri Comrie and worked under Charl de Villiers. ↩
9. Building climate. ↩
10. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
11. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
12. A small town in South Africa's Northern Cape Province. ↩
13. These plants are of the genus Aizoaceae, and his stepfather developed a particular interest in the Ophthalmophyllum latum, which is typically found in the Richtersveld in South Africa (Booyens, 2019b). ↩
14. Booyens, 2019c. ↩
15. In a report that he wrote during his stay, he referred to holes in the building for water filtration that are similar to those found in animals. It was a large structure and he writes "…die plek moet amper soos i [sic] Kakamas op pale in Rome wees" which can be translated as "…the place should almost be like a Kakamas on poles in Rome" (Booyens, 2002: 15). ↩
16. Emergency Centre for Earthquakes. ↩
17. Booyens, 2019c. ↩
18. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/thesis-1996.html (Accessed 4 December 2019) ↩
19. Now Conrad Scheffer Architects. ↩
20. It has an edge of only seventy millimetres and the structural engineer was Berni Volkmann. ↩
21. Now New Urban Architects and Urban Designers. ↩
22. Now City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. ↩
23. The project was eventually awarded to a practice that did not take part in the original competition, and the competition winners were awarded a partial settlement after a drawn-out legal process. (Booyens, 2019c) ↩
24. Now CMAI Architects. ↩
25. Booyens, 2019c. ↩
26. Booyens, 2019b. ↩
27. When I saw those things, I fell in love. ↩
28. Her father wanted to use vaulted earth construction to build economical housing in Namibia, and he invited Hassan Fathy to visit his projects. Unfortunately, Fathy could not travel to Namibia at the time due to Apartheid, but one of his assistants managed to go shortly after his death (Booyens, 2019b). ↩
29. Operations Director and Founder of Elephant-Human Relations Aid (EHRA). ↩
30. Booyens, J. 2019. Damaraland clay project. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/damaraland-clay-project.html (Accessed 4 December 2019) ↩
31. After the Earth goddess. ↩
32. Haasbroek also jokingly refers to it as his Zombie Apocalypse shelter (Haasbroek, 2019). ↩
33. Haasbroek, 2019. ↩
34. According to comparative quotations procured by Haasbroek, the actual material cost for the roof came to R8000.00 versus a quotation of R70 000.00 that was obtained for corrugated sheeting and its associated structure. The rammed earth came to R250/cubic metre versus a local quotation of R2200/cubic metre for reinforced concrete (Haasbroek, 2019). While one may have ended up using less concrete than rammed earth, his preference was for a material with lower embodied energy. ↩
35. The one challenge with the biogas digester and water treatment facility is that more inhabitants are needed in order for it to work (Haasbroek, 2019). ↩
36. This property belongs to Greg Truen from SAOTA Architects, and Booyens was referred to him by a well-known heritage consultant. ↩
37. Booyens, J. 2019. Buffelsdrift Farm. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/buffelsdrift-renovation.html (Accessed 5 December 2019) ↩
38. Computer Numerical Control. ↩
39. Booyens, J. 2019. Buffelsdrift catenary vaults. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/buffelsdrift-pumproom.html (Accessed 5 December 2019) ↩
40. He mentions having received a book on his work from a friend in 1998 (Booyens, 2019b). ↩
41. He was a Spanish building engineer who emigrated to the United States of America in 1881 and he became known for self-supporting arches and vaults that made use of the Guastavino tile. ↩
42. He refers to his books and to a lecture of his that he attended in Rome. During his stay in Rome, Bill McAlister invited him to the United Kingdom for two weeks, which gave him the opportunity to visit the Eden Project which was designed by Grimshaw and completed in 2000 (Booyens, 2019b and 2019c). ↩
43. He also mentions Jean Nouvel, particularly his Institut du Monde Arabe (The Arab World Institute) in Paris, 1987. He dryly remarks that he would like to offer the Institute some advice on how to get the façade's lenses to work again (Booyens, 2019b). ↩
44. Booyens, 2019c. This material efficiency is, however, often offset against durational inefficiencies since some of the building techniques take time to develop and execute. ↩
45. (2002: 1) ↩
46. Booyens, 2019c. ↩
47. This could be loosely translated as a "nosy parker". ↩
48. This can be translated as "The next success is not to have money, but time." The quote is from Fischer, 2014: 122. ↩
49. Fischer, 2014: 126. ↩
50. Booyens, J. 2019. Subsistence farm Rysmierberg. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/subsistance-farm-rysmierberg.html (Accessed 5 December 2019) ↩
51. "It is a made thing. It's not really a place where decent people would want to live" (Booyens, 2019a). ↩
52. This is for added insulation and to prevent wind-uplift. ↩
53. A small pick-up truck. ↩
54. This included fellow architect Alwyn Bester whose scooter was transported in the back of the bakkie, and it smelled of seal oil for a few months after the trip. ↩
55. "There are not enough brains in one head" (Booyens, 2019c). ↩
56. This building won an Award of Merit from the Cape Institute for Architecture in 2009, and an Award for Excellence from the South African Institute of Architects in 2010. ↩
57. This building won an Award of Merit from the Pretoria Institute for Architecture in 2019. ↩
58. Booyens, J. 2019. Manifesto. [Online] Available: http://www.rysmierberg.com/design-philosophy.html (Accessed 6 December 2019) ↩
59. Power out of the earth. ↩

Louw, M. 2019. Architectural alchemy: Jaco Booyens (1969–). Commissioned essay, revision E, 3 December 2019. Reproduced with the author's permission.

Strangers at Home

Reproduced in full, as written, with the author's permission. The essay considers the work of both resident architects at the British School at Rome that year — Jaco Booyens and Megan Williams — and both discussions are kept. The file the author publishes is a scan, and optical character recognition has damaged a scattering of characters in it (for example "carerul" for "careful", "rolds" for "folds", and a lower-case l standing in for a capital I). These have been repaired. No word has been altered.

"Sir: You are desired to proceed to Georgetown where you will find Mr. Ellicott employed in making a survey and Map of the Federal Territory. The special object of asking your aid is to have a drawing of the particular grounds most likely to be approved for the site of the Federal town and buildings. You will therefore be pleased to begin on the Eastern branch and proceed from thence upwards, laying down the hills, valleys, morasses and waters between that and the Potomac, the Tiber, and the road leading from Georgetown to the Eastern branch and connecting the whole with certain fixed points on the map Mr. Ellicott is preparing. Some idea of the height of the lands above the base on which they stand would be desirable. I will beg the favour of you to mark to me your progress about twice a week, say every Wednesday and Saturday evening, that I may be able in proper time to draw your attention to some other objects which I have not at this moment sufficient information to define." Thomas Jefferson, letter to Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French architect, author of the master plan for Washington D.C., 1791

BEFORE ANY CITY OR ARCHITECTURE exists, there is a geography, a topography, a climate, a possibility. In Rome as in Washington, someone saw a place rich in plains, hills and water, studied its features and position, recognised its potential, and thus opened the way for a history. In particular Rome, unlike its city colonies, accepted the weight of its natural territory as its given foundation, structuring itself according to a topological discourse.

What applies to the act of foundation, also applies to the evolution which followed. Migration, always a cultural event, plays a fundamental role in the redefinition of an acknowledged urban meaning.

Each new citizenship, even a temporary one, proposes another system of settlement, a multiplication of the space-city, a new mental skyline. Only the Piedmontese, with the building of the Esquilino quarter, will bring to the Rome city plan a regular grid structure, in accordance to their military Turinese Romaness.

The inhabitant of a place often has routines, habits, conventions that prevent aware vision. One takes for granted what is only a custom, a way of being-in-the-world. An external, foreign point of view often seizes on the structures of urban reality better than a city's own inhabitants are able to. This depends on the traveller not having a Baedeker, not having prejudice, nor the will to state that what they are seeing corresponds to what the tourist brochures anticipated and promised.

Those who come from elsewhere may also misinterpret, willingly or through ignorance. It is a potentially fruitful unawareness, because it allows one to pose all the questions and therefore the answers without taking anything for granted or established. What is this city? What are the structural elements of the place? How do we choose them in our daily inhabitance?

Those who come from elsewhere have always been here. The oh so Roman obelisks are Egyptian; the Caestian Pyramid is but an imitation of much grander ones; the domes were born elsewhere; Hadrian's Villa celebrates the nostalgia of the faraway, witnessed and dreamed. The construction of the city took place through the appropriation and re-interpretation of parts or things belonging to others, in the projection of images that were foreign.

Those who come from elsewhere can continue to speculate on the presence of the past as a point of view and rediscover the persistence of a geography and its possibilities, underneath deposits of habits. This contribution to an urban consciousness-raising, beyond any self-congratulation, is very apparent in both the work and the thinking of the two resident architects at the British school.

Jaco Booyens turns his attention away from the mythical and museum role of the city and he sees it as a purely natural place. In this he instinctively belongs to the above mentioned unawareness. In his description of the urban site for his Self-Sustainable Vertical Village on the Tiber, Rome becomes a river inlet, with specific features of exposure and position. Rome is beyond Romaness, and one can speculate on the 'here and now' and on the 'here and then' in equal terms. This is something that has already happened in other historical epochs. Booyens researches the geographical context hidden in the folds of the city, proposes architecture as a synergy between place, building and inhabitant: a building which influences the life of those who live in it and adapts these lives to this Rome-before Rome. Architecture is the result of a series of careful considerations regarding a self-sustainable use of energy, the efficient functioning of the natural systems of energy supply, the implications of low impact technology on the environment. Involuntarily and paradoxically, this creates an object with a powerful visual impact. A new totem, a fantastic, unconscious, primitive monument rises from the Tiber. The contemporary inhabitance questions the consolidated system of persistence, warping its context, mixing it up with other types of mental space. It reworks the public/private relationship and its perception according to continually evolving structures. Whoever comes from outside is able to point out the autonomy of vision, beyond the social and historical meanings of a place.

Megan Williams's project is to interrogate the city as a place of communal life. In her questionnaire she asks her interviewees to take a stand: "Do you live in Rome now? What does it mean to be a Roman today? Why is Rome special, if it is so? Has Rome changed your life? What is your favourite place in Rome? Who do Rome's monuments belong to? What would Rome be without monuments? When you think of Rome, what do you see?" These questions refer us to the need to put ourselves in the position of an inhabitant and to think of the city as a place of affects, as an inherited place, as a property simultaneously collective and personal. Who does the city belongs to, how much it belongs to me, what grabs my attention, how do I possess it? Unlike Booyens's natural geography, here we are dealing with an inquiry into the collective and individual phenomenology of each citizen. To ask and ask oneself questions, to provide oneself with working tools. In her work on the Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Williams is looking for a topological and geometric rule that forces vision to expose itself, in its paradoxical transformation into blindness: at first she walks down the road, and every ten steps she takes a photograph looking ahead of herself; then in the studio she projects the sequence of photographs on to a wall, each image remains visible for a few seconds during which time she makes a sketch on a piece of paper. The result is a series of syntheses, images which make a record of the fundamental elements that structure the vision of the urban space in which we move. A grid is then laid over these sketches, and the 'random' points of superimposition are highlighted on sheets of tracing paper, which eventually placed side by side reconstruct a virtual vision — 'never willed, never sought, never seen' — of the space of the street she walked along. Williams writes, "When I look at this world around me through the conduit of my sensual perceptibility, am I free to look without judging it? Can I separate myself from my cultural and experiential biases? Am I bound to be a tourist making superficial commentary? Can I see without being influenced by the memory of what came before and my anticipation of what will happen next? Do I suffer from a type of blindness? Is it 'things' I see? Or is it a series of shapes, patterns, edges, areas of relief and tension?"

What we think we see in a place is always influenced by what we expect to see in it, what we know of it, what we hope to find there. The permeable vision of the city by those who come from outside allows one to look with a heightened awareness and unmask the continuous victory of the ideal over the real. Because to live in Rome is a question of points of view.

Alessi, A. 2002. Strangers at home. Strategies for a non-habitual inhabitance in Rome. In British School in Rome. 2002. Fine Arts 2001–2002. Catalogue. London: The British School at Rome. © Alberto Alessi, albertoalessi.com. Reproduced with permission.