“The Bitumen Lab”, is a small intervention in the “North Campus” at the Nelson Mandela University. While the building is an integral part of the campus, its function is “commercial” and not educational, providing crucial quality testing into the Civil Engineering Sector. It locates itself in one of the many courtyards formed by uniform, indistinct utilitarian classroom blocks and support facilities. Other than being informed by the specialized internal functional requirements, the plan form is informed by pre-existing pedestrian movement patterns through the courtyard.
The intervention then simultaneously becomes a landscape project creating, in the immediate proximity of the building, a ‘human focused’ campus experience.
noh ARCHITECTS 