Llewellyn van Wyk
Llewellyn van Wyk graduated in architecture from the University of Cape Town in 1980. He opened his own architecture practice in 1983, completing over 300 buildings within Southern Africa over a period of 20 years. In 2002 he left professional practice and took up a research post at the CSIR in Pretoria, South Africa, where he heads a research team examining new construction materials and methods based on an advanced construction technology platform. All of his work is predicated on sustainability principles.
Llewellyn is a Past-President of the South African Institute of Architects (SAIA), and the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA). He is the Director for the UIA Work Programme Sustainable Architecture, Region V (Africa).
Llewellyn served on the City Council of Cape Town for 12 years, becoming Deputy-Mayor in 1993.
Llewellyn has presented Keynote Addresses at conferences around the world. He is a visiting lecturer and examiner at various universities in South Africa.
Design for Sustainable Human Settlements: A South African Case Study
Green building aims to reduce the impact of building on the environment while improving the indoor environmental quality. In this sense, green building is a sub-set of sustainable development: sustainable development as conceptualised in the Brundtland Report, sets out five key principles which are:
- Address the needs of people, especially the poor
- There are limitations imposed on sustainable development by the state of technology and social organisation
- The environment is held as a proxy for social equity between generations
- Sustainability is pro-development provided it involves a progressive transformation of society and economy
- The impact of development on the environment must be accounted for. For green building to contribute towards sustainable development these five principles should be demonstrated.
This case study arises out of CSIR appointment by the Department of Science and Technology in January 2008 to "develop, test and implement innovative technologies aimed at contributing toward sustainable human settlements." The objective of the research is to achieve comfortable affordable housing that performs as well as or equal to middle income housing, are durable and quick to build, readily alterable, easily extendable, less dependent on municipal services, and able to facilitate sustainable human settlements. Accordingly the CSIR designed, developed and tested an alternative house using innovative technologies to improve the performance of the house.
The study finds that innovative technologies developed through intensive design and employing Science, Engineering and Technology can deliver measurable performance improvements across a range of metrics that would substantially improve the quality of life of the poor as well as contribute to sustainable human settlements.
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