Project Category: Landscape Architecture Project of the Year (Unbuilt)
Project Name: N8 Airport Development Node
Location & Context: Urban design layout for property 700 hectares in size that was located south of the Bram Fischer (Bloemfontein) International Airport.
Size: 700 hectares
Timeline: Unbuilt (2014)
Built Cost: N/A
Teams Involved: Insite Landscape Architects: Neal Schoof, Su-Ann Bürschen, Riaan Wilmans.
Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality Department of Social and Economic Planning.
Artists / other contributing professionals: Frans Van Wyk Landscape Architect (Assistance with Urban Design Layout), Jaksa Barbir Urban Designer (Assistance with Urban Design Framework Document). Proplan Consulting Engineers (Tasked with Civil Design).
Material Used: N/A
Project Overview: The Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality requested that an Urban Design Layout be completed for a piece of property 700 hectares in size that was located south of the Bram Fischer (Bloemfontein) International Airport. The Urban Design encompassed a completely new layout design of all erven
and roadways on undeveloped land. It was very important to the client that, above everything, the Mangaung Airport Development Node must have a sense of place. In an era when Urban Design/Planning can fall into the tendency of diagrammatic urban planning, resulting in in-coherent layouts and meaningless urban places. This design is the result of an alternative approach and provides a striking integration of Aesthetic Design, Environmental Integration, and poignant Urban Design.
This was captured in the following design elements:
– A dramatic north-south visual axis from the N8 and Airport approach south through the development.
– An impressive Urban Core at the heart of the development at the heart of the spatial context of the site.
– A large water body adjacent to the Urban Core reflecting the sky and the development and an integrated riverine system (Bloemspruit) which forms a green spine through the development.
– A road design that has a hierarchy of road types (boulevards, activity streets, etc.) which has an extremely varied and interesting layout/patterning.
– Integrated residential diversity, providing for all income types.