Making an Impact

Calling all EDGE Experts

GBCSA invites you to expand your professional credentials by becoming an EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) Auditor – a key role in ensuring that projects meet the EDGE-certification standard. As an EDGE Auditor, you’ll conduct design and site audits, evaluate project documentation, and help drive sustainable development across the continent.

Certified EDGE experts with relevant project experience, an interest into expanding into auditing, and a desire to support quality assurance in the EDGE certification process should attend. The workshop is also open to EDGE Experts based in Africa, including those outside South Africa, especially working on residential projects.

Content includes: EDGE certification process overview;
EDGE project registration; how to conduct design and post-construction audits; and preliminary and final certification.

EDGE Auditor online workshop
Thursday, 7 August, 09h00 – 13h00 (Zoom)
Book here, or email training@gbcsa.org.za

38th Corobrik Student Architecture Awards

Corobrik’s Student Architecture Awards showcase South Africa’s leading emerging architects by celebrating innovative thesis work, providing a national platform for exposure to industry professionals and fostering opportunities for recognition, networking and mentorship.

The awards elevate architectural education by promoting excellence in design, sustainability and social impact, while highlighting the potential of architecture to address critical urban and societal challenges. The regional finalists for the national award were selected from the eight major universities, based on the students’ Architectural Master’s theses from the class of 2024.

Tammy Ohlson de Fine from the University of the Witwatersrand took home the R70 000 grand prize. Thapelo Douse (Nelson Mandela University) and Shannon Rees (University of Pretoria) each received commendations, winning R10 000 for their outstanding contributions.

Ohlson de Fine’s award-winning thesis, based in Prince Albert in the Karoo, responds to the climate crisis by focusing on a biodiversity research station. “Much of architecture prioritises human users. My project also prioritises the land and its creatures, treating the environment as an equal protagonist in the design process, not just a backdrop.”

Douse’s project explores discomfort and memory, reflecting on forced removals under the Group Areas Act. “I looked at South End in Port Elizabeth, a vibrant, diverse town dismantled by apartheid-era freeway structures. My proposal is not just a building; it is an evocative, almost uncomfortable setting. That is the kind of architecture I aspire to, serving as a mediator between humanity and matter.”

Rees’s project is situated in Eshowe, Zululand, and explores the region’s rich traditions of craft. “Eshowe houses the world’s largest display of wicker baskets and pottery. My project asks if I, as an architect, can be influenced by a potter or basket weaver? The locals speak so confidently of their craftsmanship, as if they can build anything from any shape. Learning from that is probably the best architectural education I could ask for.”

Corobrik CEO Nick Booth described the event, held on 8 May, as “an investment not only in terms of money, but in passion and belief in the profession, and into the future of the built environment.”

www.studentawards.corobrik.co.za

WorldGBC’s NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings

This year’s COP30 in November in Belém, Brazil, will be a critical inflection point for people and planet as countries prepare to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – climate action plans that chart a country’s course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris Agreement.

To meet global 2030 climate targets, nations must now collectively reduce emissions by 42%. Collectively, national commitments remain insufficient, and NDC commitments fall far short of the 1.5°C goal, with current commitments on track for 2.6–3.1°C of warming over the course of the century. February this year was the initial deadline for countries to submit their revised NDCs, but so far only 23 out of 195 countries have submitted.

In June, World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) and the global GBC network launched a new digital tool – the NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings – that will help policymakers assess their countries’ climate action plans, revealing where action is needed to rapidly decarbonise the buildings sector and prioritise resilience to meet global climate 2030 targets.

The NDC Scorecard tool was designed to identify best-practice building policies that should be in revised NDCs and integrated into national buildings regulatory frameworks. It aims to help governments and key stakeholders to:

• Identify best practice policy measures that should be contained within a country’s NDC and their national policy framework;
• Analyse how a country’s NDC, national policies and regulations align against these policy measures;
• Use the tool as a platform for collaboration with industry stakeholders and governments; and
• Prepare political actors for a wider process to develop national decarbonisation roadmaps (with green building councils as facilitators).

Join GBCSA in partnership with WorldGBC for the NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings workshop
Tuesday, 12 August, 09h00 – 13h00
Radisson Red Hotel, 4 Parks Bvd, Dunkeld, Johannesburg;
free attendance for confirmed delegates (government stakeholders and private-sector members). Email
events@gbcsa.org.za; www.worldgbc-ndc-scorecard.org

Make it in Africa to build Africa

Against the backdrop of Africa’s fast-approaching construction boom, Saint-Gobain Africa hosted its first Sustainable Construction Talk (SCT) in Africa in June. The gathering united developers, architects, engineers, finance and sustainability experts to unpack the question: How do we build sustainably and inclusively, at the right cost?

Saint-Gobain’s Sustainable Construction Talks have previously made global stops in Paris, New York, Milan and Dubai. The Cape Town edition was the first in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where an estimated 80% of buildings needed by 2050 have not yet been constructed.

In his welcome address, Othman Benjelloun-Touimi, CEO of Saint-Gobain Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighted the need for collaboration and contextual thinking: “We are not here to duplicate global strategies. Africa requires homegrown solutions that reflect our communities, climate and cultures. At Saint-Gobain, our commitment is to ‘Make it in Africa to Build Africa’, cultivating partnerships that grow local industries, create jobs and support a more inclusive, climate-resilient built environment.”

According to the recently released 2025 Sustainable Construction Barometer, conducted across 27 countries, just 33% of African construction stakeholders feel adequately informed about sustainable practices. Yet respondents consistently ranked environmental protection, material competitiveness and transparency as key priorities for sustainable construction.

Climate change, said panellists, is placing severe strain on the livelihoods of daily wage earners in the construction sector and challenging the resilience of infrastructure across the continent. But if tackled collaboratively, the sector has the potential to drive inclusive economic growth.

One speaker noted, “Designing with biodiversity, end-user comfort, community engagement, and incorporating indigenous architecture allows us to build spaces that are not only functional, but fair spaces that reflect who we are and where we’re going.”

With infrastructure projects accelerating across South Africa, Saint-Gobain urged all stakeholders to help shape the country’s evolving green building standards and climate policies. www.saint-gobain-africa.com/en/sustainable-construction-observatory