Nelson Mandela Engagement Excellence Award as team leader for the project “The Spirit of water”. Dr Magda Minguzzi and Ms Lucy Vosloo

Dr Magda Minguzzi and Ms Lucy Vosloo

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Nelson Mandela University Engagement Project Award 2019
The project was an engagement with the Point Discovery Centre Board and Mossel Bay Tourism for the design of a human origins visitors centre at the Point in Mossel Bay. The need for the centre has arisen out of the recent discoveries of artefacts made in the nearby cave, PP13B, at Pinnacle Point which give significant insight into our intellectual development and human origins. The primary aspirations of the PDCB were to develop a place to exhibit, educate, and facilitate further research around these significant findings; and in its boldest ambitions to create a centre that will reconnect us with our environment; and that will reconnect us with each other through our shared, ancient heritage.
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Nelson Mandela University Engagement Excellence Awards 2020
Awarded for engagement with the underserviced community of a shack settlement in Airport Valley in Port Elizabeth and the non-profit organization Walmer Angels Project for a new Creche which was designed and built by the 2nd year architectural design studio.  The project looked to blur boundaries between academia, community, and the profession; and while being of service to society, contribute to the engagement, research, and teaching portfolio of the Nelson Mandela University. Video 1, Video 2. 

The art project “Spirit of the water” presented at the Cape Recife Nature Reserve (Port Elizabeth, South Africa) on the 05th and 06th of May 2017 was part of an international event “The way of water” that took place contextually, at the same time, in different coastal cities:  Brooklyn (US), Ouidah (BEN), Port Elizabeth (RSA), San Luis Potosí (MEX), Venice (IT), Zadar (HRV).

Architectural Engagements with OUR origins. The project is the design for a new human origins interpretation centre at the Point in Mossel Bay. The need for the centre has arisen out of the recent discoveries of artefacts made in the nearby cave, PP13B, at Pinnacle Point, and give significant insight into our intellectual development and human origins. The university was approached by the Point Discovery Centre Board (PDCB), who has been tasked with the realisation of the new interpretation
centre, to generate potential ideas and to create hype around this exciting project.

With the main focus on the study of pre-colonial indigenous sites and related values, Architecture’s Dr Magda Minguzzi has received three years of funding (R600 000) for her community engagement research from the NRF (National Research Foundation).

Creche X3. The second year design studio at the Nelson Mandela University School of Architecture is currently in the process of designing and building a new 80 SQM crèche in the informal shack settlement of Airport Valley, Gqebera, Port Elizabeth. The design proposes a new building, including two classrooms and a storage area, to replace an existing dilapidated shack which is structurally unsound, has no floor and is unfit for purpose as a place for early childhood development.