A mustard seed for Cape Town

Opportunities for sustainable building with precast concrete parts
in South Africa

Fig. 1 The mission: Building dignified homes for dignified
people uses.

Fig. 2 The gigantic development area of the township of Philippi.

Fig. 3 Initiators and speakers showing (from the left): Dr. Ulrich Lotz, Thomas Swana, Shaiek Coe, Kimmo Vesterinen.

Fig. 4 Nu-Crete: The contact partner for sustainable building with precast concrete parts in South Africa.

Fig. 5 Drumming up support for precast concrete parts: Katja Priem, PÜZ BAU, and Paul Stöhrer, Ingenieurbüro Stöhrer, consulting engineers.

Fig. 6 Thomas Swana presented the “Mustard Seed House” concept.

Fig. 7 Corrugated huts like these are already regarded as “upscale” living.

Fig. 8 Dr. Ulrich Lotz outlined the opportunities of the precast construction method on the example of Germany.

Fig. 9 Colorful houses in the Malay Quarter in Cape Town.

Fig. 10 At the Cape of Good Hope.

It was the first conference on precast concrete construction in Cape Town/South Africa and it may become an impulse for a sustainable change of the trend of housing construction in South Africa. Why is this necessary and why can precast concrete parts make an essential contribution to this?

A pleasant country – charged with social dynamite

Since the World Soccer Cup in 2010, the world has a very positive impression of the country at the southern tip of Africa: open people who in their joy raucously showered hospitality across all borders. But this show is now over, the world is looking into other directions and there are tasks of gigantic magnitude at hand. Since the early 1990s with a democratic manifesto and, thanks to Nelson Mandela, blessed with a figurehead of freedom, this is how one has come to know this breathtakingly beautiful country that for centuries under the yoke of...