GIfA 2025 AWARDS
Award of Commendation
Anchored into a rocky outcrop in Johannesburg, the original House Millar by Architect Stan Field and recipient of the 1974 SAIA Award stands as a seminal example of Brutalist Architecture. In reimagining the residence, the architectural response was both conservation-minded and future-facing. The intervention is underpinned by a biophilic and site-syntonic design methodology. Existing features such as rocks, topography and trees served as bio mimic design generators. A mature tree was incorporated into living areas, an atrium becomes an indigenous ‘forest’, living roofs blur landscape with surrounding. An ethno-botanic approach informs the integration of landscape and its ‘primordial place’. Water operates as both a spatial and phenomenological medium. At the main entrance, a waterfall over an existing rock defines a liminal threshold, and with its adjacent reflective pond, it calibrates acoustics and surface reflections. An indigenous lily pond interfaces with the main bedroom, and merges biofiltration with visual continuity of indoor-outdoor spaces. Concrete is the predominant material. The iconic red pigmented
concrete of the original dwelling is extended into two new surrounding pavilions, complimented by in-situ concrete roofs, polished and precast floor and wall elements and exposed aggregate pigmented plastering. In this project, concrete becomes sensorial; reflecting contextual design
considerations and the craftsmanship of the contractors. Spatially, the new architectural insertions create juxtapositions between mass and transparency. Natural light is maximized, and indoor-outdoor connections are created through large- sliding doors, glass planes and skylights. Off-grid sustainability is advanced via integrated solar infrastructure and a borehole-fed, UV-purified water system.
Ultimately, the project is an architectural tectonic palimpsest that traces, respects, and rearticulates the site, landscape, material and spatial habitation.
The Rock
Leaf Architects
The design of this home prioritizes the living arrangement of three generations of one family, with shared spaces that bring them gently into contact, while respecting the need to disconnect at times. The gross area of 290 sqm for both the house and cottage is a compact urban response in a suburban context. Generosity of space is brought in through tall volumes and connection to outdoor living rooms. Every square meter is considered for its use and for the economic weight it carries. The house is constructed in brick, giving thermal mass and visual gravity in its deeper walls. The materiality is calm, durable and grounded in local context.
Where the two house¬holds meet, full-height doors open into a brick-paved lobby as a continuation of the entrance path. Secondary ‘front doors’ are linked to this semi-outdoor arrival space. A wide passage runs along the northern edge of the ground floor, an axis linking the living spaces in conversation with one another along its length. This hallway completes each of the rooms it passes, with deep sills inviting use and bringing in north light. The bookshelf is a threshold onto the stair. Upstairs in the private realm the passage widens into a pyjama lounge. The two sides of the house meet again at the upper terrace, overlooking a Gingko tree planted by the grandparents decades ago. The house acknowledges this with care, offering views and moments that reconnect the family with its presence.
Built with restraint and grounded in local materials, the architecture excels at doing more with less.
Two Sides House
MiMo Architects
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House Schalkwyk
Monograph Architects
This courtyard house is the result of a careful and site-specific architectural response to a narrow stand measuring 76 metres in length and only 15 metres in width. With north facing the short edge, the challenge was to draw natural light and ventilation deep into the home while maximising usable outdoor space. The constraints of the site were approached as opportunities to create something exceptional.
The house is not conceived as a singular mass but as a composition of interconnected spaces. A series of courtyards and lightwells break up the linear footprint, introducing essential light and air while dissolving the boundaries between interior and exterior. These courtyards are deliberately positioned as integral parts of the home, offering moments of openness, greenery, and spatial relief throughout.
The decision to build boundary to boundary along both long edges allowed the design to prioritise outdoor areas, directly responding to the clients’ wish to create a generous
garden for their young and growing family. Despite the narrow proportions of the site, the house feels expansive. Living areas flow effortlessly into the courtyards, creating a
continuous and layered spatial experience.
The project was significantly enriched by the close collaboration with the client, an interior designer. This partnership ensured that the interiors and architecture were seamlessly integrated. Material selections are tactile, durable, and warm, supporting a simple, honest architectural language while offering a refined and comfortable living environment. The careful play of light, shadow, and texture gives the home a quiet sophistication.
What makes this project exceptional is its ability to transform a highly constrained suburban site into a calm, flexible, and light-filled family home. It demonstrates how meaningful architectural solutions can emerge from tight parameters, resulting in a home that celebrates light, landscape, and everyday living with lasting quality and generosity.
New Entrance and Pool House
Korina Holley Architects
Our architectural intervention: As the home’s existing front door was in the incorrect position and completely under-utilised, we wished to give the house, its family and its guest a deliberate sense of arrival and experience of entrance. We decided to use the current under-utilised front patio to create a bold new welcome. A steel clad exterior and timber clad interior pod provide a contrast to the style of the existing home providing an arrival point, a space of pause before entering the home.
Upon engaging with the existing house and property we felt that the existing patio was in the incorrect position for entertaining as it led directly off the existing bedrooms not the living areas of the house. We instead of extending their existing patio space. The new entertainment space mirrors the existing house in position, framed by the pool and lawn. Inside and outside flow seamlessly through frameless folding sliding doors. The glass gable ends and open trusses ensure the space is flooded with light. The sunken fire pit with braai and pizza oven connect the existing pool with the new entertainment space providing the family and guest with their place of play.
Award of Merit
The APPS STEAM Centre is a hybrid amalgam of maker space, computer facilities, performance space, and library. These are conceptually stitched together by a movement trajectory that weaves through them, creating an exploratory learning environment.
Our approach to the APPS STEAM Centre was inspired by the innovative curriculum reform the school was undergoing. This included empowering young girls with 21stcentury making, coding, and research skills. We began with the premise that this building should be a beacon to new learning modes at the school and celebrate innovation while acknowledging the existing campus’s heritage and attractive scale.
The Centre is part retrofit and part contemporary addition. The central (9 x 9 x 9m) cubic addition is a contemporary expression of the characterful bagged brickwork of the school’s village typology and a new, vertical landmark. It sits in the heart of the campus and is integrated carefully into its context: on the ground floor, a maker space shop window reveals the activity inside. At the same time, the uppermost level nestles as a retreat in the tree canopy.
Inside its restrained exterior, a bold materials palette – of geometric linoleum, warm carpets, glossy steelwork, warm plywood, and colourful furniture – enhances a complex spatial sequence, and together these manifest the school’s innovative curriculum. An easy flow between learning spaces echoes conceptually the interdependence of programmes and activities.
Learning spaces range from the formality of the computer lab to the informality of reading pods, and allow for collaboration and individual work. The maker space is a flexible learning environment, alive with tools and technological platforms, its floor patterned for robotic programming. The mini-auditorium provides a cocooned environment for recitals and audio-visual displays. The library is distributed along a dynamic, light-washed volumetric trajectory. Its spiral slide, workstations and playful shelving a mirror to the adventure of learning.
Sustainable materials include linoleum flooring and plywood; orientation and shading of openings exploit natural light and cross ventilation; and the Centre produces its own energy.
New STEAM Centre for Auckland Park Preparatory School
Meshworks Architecture + Urbanism
The Link Building for the School of Architecture and Planning and the School of Construction John Moffat Extension, Building
Lemon pebble Architects and SRS Architects
The project was to create a new extension for the University of Witwatersrand for the School of Architecture and Planning and the School of Construction and Economic Management that connects the schools physically in the hope of encouraging collaborative engagement for the Built Environment Faculty.
Through the design of a distinct precinct for the Built Environment, the building breaks the silos in which the schools were operating. The creation of a link building with outdoor, landscaped courtyards that connects new spaces with old has created a gateway to the larger campus through universally accessible connective routes.
The new intervention resolves complex circulation and compliance issues of the existing building. The L-shaped building consists of double volume public levels on the lower three floors, that engage with the outside through large shopfront windows, whilst the upper levels accommodate offices, seminar rooms, and new studio spaces. The more efficient circulation ensures easier access and a more robust, continuous, and sustainable use of existing spaces. The building creates new expanded circulation spaces that offer students and staff space to relax in, meet, socialise, work and re-imagine as they see fit.
Collaboration was a core part of the process from the joint venture of two architectural companies, LEMON Pebble Architects and SRS Architects, who followed an extensive participatory engagement process that included the students, staff of both schools, the general student body, and non-academic support staff that assisted to shape the brief.
Khanyisa 55 Athol
Rebel Base Collective
This addition to the St Mary’s campus re imagines what an educational space can be. Rather than echoing conventional school design, we pursued a spatial language rooted in context—drawing from the architectural cues embedded across the existing campus to create a new building that feels both distinct and deeply familiar.
Situated at the convergence of the Junior and Senior School axes and aligned with the main arrival and parking zones, the building becomes more than just a destination—it becomes a point of passage. Its form is split and pulled apart by movement, carving out in-between spaces that invite pause, interaction, and moments of retreat. These are not corridors, but connective tissues—places to gather, to think, to linger.
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We often design for people as the primary users of space. But here, the opportunity was broader: to design a place for play, for pause, and for presence—a setting where sport, landscape, and leisure meet.
The Racket Pavilion became more than just a building; it became a platform for community, for movement, and for moments in between.
This project is about clarity and rhythm. The courts are laid out like instruments in a field—precisely arranged, yet softened by planting, pathways, and natural shifts in terrain. The architecture responds with simplicity: robust materials, hard-wearing surfaces, and a pavilion that opens and closes with the energy of the day.
Racquets Centre The CCJ Woodmead
Rebel Base Collective
Drawing Memory
into Being
Lemon pebble Architects and Office 24-7 Architects
Created for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at the FONDAZIONE LA BEINNALE DI VENEZIA, ‘Drawing Memory into Being’ was an installation about the relationship between material erasure and historical forgetting.
The act of performing salah1 on the ground of a historic, racist, forced removal is an act of poetic protest. This act of resistance and reclamation forms the catalyst for this installation.
The Malay community of South Africa are descendants of enslaved and free Muslims. In 1871, during the diamond rush, Malay transport riders arrive in Kimberley and establish Malay Camp, a thriving urbanity and diverse community of mainly people of colour develops.
The design inverts the images with the ground plane above. The ground plane as ‘ceiling’ is inscribed with the grid of prayer mats. The inversion is symbolic of the fact that the buildings no longer exist – while the ground is still potent with the performance of prayer and protest. The prayer mats and installation were orientated to face Mecca.
Drawing and layering these facades using the medium of bamboo beaded curtains allowed for a
dematerialisation and ghostly evocation allowing the wind to rustle and visitors to walk through the
installation.
A projection of black and white images tells the story of the vitality and community of Malay Camp. An audio soundscape will softy play the sounds of the prayer.
Award of Excellence
COROBRICK AWARD WINNER
House Hill-Venter 21
Monograph Architects
Located in Parkhurst, one of Johannesburg’s most historical and vibrant suburbs, this two-bedroom home gives a respectful nod to mid-century modern design, a subject that the clients are very passionate about. The clients’ collection of mid-century furniture and art, and their love of the outdoors strongly influenced the design of the home.
While the architecture feels bold and sculptural, it’s also sensitive to its context. The main form of the house is carefully contained within the original footprint of the old home, ensuring that it fits comfortably within the scale of the surrounding buildings. This respect for the rhythm and grain of the neighbourhood reinforces the home’s understated presence on the street, allowing it to feel both distinct and deeply rooted in its setting.
The roofline is fully integrated into the overall shape of the house, giving it a simple, sculptural presence. Its solid, almost monolithic form is softened by deep-set windows and doors, which break up the massing while drawing in natural light, framing views of the garden, and creating a play of shadow throughout the day. The use of facebrick on the exterior & interior of the building grounds the building in a sense of timelessness.
Inside, the atmosphere is calm and composed. Crisp white walls and warm timber joinery form a neutral backdrop that allows the clients’ art and furniture to take centre stage. At the heart of the home, a sheltered courtyard opens directly off the main living areas. Framed by brick and softened with timber, this private garden space becomes the social centre of the house, perfect for both quiet moments and casual gatherings.
What sets this project apart is how seamlessly it blends architectural expression with personal story. It’s a home that feels sculptural and grounded, yet warm, intimate and unmistakably lived in.
Award of Excellence
This brief was taken in December 2019 and concluded in January 2020, just before the world locked down due to Covid-19.
Our clients: a young couple about to get married and begin their life journey together.
Client vision: create a sanctuary for them and their future family; a long-term 20-year home; a timeless design, appealing and appropriate over the building’s lifetime; flexible enough to be tailored to adapt to all stages of family life; modern and sophisticated, yet practical; open plan living but characterised by interesting “moments” to enjoy the home and its spectacular surroundings; inspired by the site and its colours, textures, rhythms, and patterns; the home narrating a strong dialogue between built and natural environments.
These clients provided a very clear and specific brief and open communication regarding their dreams, aspirations, interests, passions and functional requirements which enabled a streamlined process and tailored response. We listened and learned from spending time with the client and site. Covid offered the gift of time, to dwell on the site, at sunrise, sunset, to feel the place, to tune in, so when the site spoke, we were able to respond appropriately, respectfully and purposefully, letting the trees and vegetation on site influence our path forward.
Our response is bespoke in every way: the clients’ design aspirations and functional requirements woven seamlessly into to the unique experience of the site and its natural beauty. While the estate guidelines dictated the duo-pitch roof forms, there was a considered approach to levels, function, spatial relationships, views, contrast, comfort and movement through the home together with thoughtful attention to detail, textures and colours that characterise the experience of the home.
The requirement for not only a masculine home with a strong, coherent design vision, but also careful detail consideration and a soft, more feminine interior are evident as is the strong connection to nature.
Our clients were a driving force in the realisation of this home, a pleasure and a joy to work with and the home exemplifies their impeccable taste and resourcefulness. The home was finally completed in 2023 and is a testimony to the client, professional team and skilled artisans who together made it all possible.
House 76
Drew Architects
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New Highveld House for Cohen and Consiglio
Meshworks Architecture + Urbanism
New Highveld House offers a reverence for cyclical change, an innovative answer to a desire for comfort and permanence, and an appreciation of natural forms and materials.
The brief sought a forever home to delight and surprise, navigable as its retired owners age. Truth to materials was paramount. Our response was inspired by an unfolding journey rooted in pre-colonial forms of space-making, challenging traditional domestic typologies of the Highveld. We conceptualised this as a home that always unfolds and reveals itself in layers, integrating the site’s natural slope, orientation, and optimal sun angles for winter and summer.
Thick ribbon walls of rammed earth are intersected by large glass planes enclosing the interiors, while gridded concrete block walls provide a Cartesian counterpoint to the sinuous plasticity. Permeable steel screens filter views and disaggregate the solidity.
The house is an experiential journey. A canyon-like spine ramps from the driveway to the public areas then descends towards private zones nestled in the south. An ambulatory – circling from the living spaces to the sunlit bedroom walkway and defining the central courtyard – sets up an everchanging orbiting. Views are restricted and revealed; spaces are compressed and expanded.
The house scoops its largely indigenously planted surroundings into its rhythms and flows. Light is wielded optimally through strategic openings, and the house changes radically as sunshine dances across its ochre walls.
The design is tied to the site’s topography. With its permeable exterior paving, thick thermally responsive walls, double glazing, slab insulation, water storage, and solar energy, this house requires fewer resources and less maintenance. Its undulating forms and natural patinas carry an uncanny energy. It is an unprecedented response to its Highveld context.
Klaff Family
Sports Center
Hubo Studios
More Than a Sports Centre: Inside Hubo Studio’s Visionary Campus for King David High What began as a modest sports centre with a single court has grown into a landmark campus, a dynamic ecosystem of movement, recovery, and community. The Klaff Family Sports Complex at King David High School is not merely a building; it's a choreography of spaces shaped through empathy, analysis, and architectural finesse. The story of its design is one of listening first, then building with purpose.
From the outset, Hubo Studio rooted the project in participatory design. A series of intensive workshops brought together stakeholders from across the school ecosystem, from coaches and caretakers to m edical professionals, students, and donors. These weren’t perfunctory meetings. They were strategic inquiries that revealed the friction points of daily use: insufficient storage, isolated recovery spaces, awkward transitions between activities. Each “hassle” surfaced in these sessions was a seed for architectural opportunity. Storage is now neatly tucked under resilient cross-laminated timber bleachers. Courtyards aren’t just circulation spaces, they’re social arenas, extensions of play and recovery.
Conceptually, the project challenges the notion of a single, monolithic sports building. Instead, Hubo Studio proposed a campus, a constellation of specialised yet connected structures. The result is a spatial narrative of openness, visibility, and adaptability. There’s a dance studio, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, a cardio gym with double-volume views of the fields, amphitheatre seating, and even two recovery rooms with ice baths. These are tied together not only through pathways and sightlines but through carefully orchestrated interstitial spaces: terraces, spill-out zones, and shared courtyards that breathe life into the whole.
This decentralised approach also maximises the site’s natural slope. The heaviest, most voluminous elements, like the four-storey arena, are nestled at the lower end of the site. This keeps the building’s presence modest from the street while allowing each level direct outdoor access. It’s an architectural move that reduces visual obstruction while enhancing usability. From upper terraces to tunnelconnected locker rooms, every space is designed for flow, of bodies, air, light, and energy.
Aesthetically, the complex is bold without being brash. The dominant King David blue, expertly rendered in artisan-crafted plasterwork, unifies the buildings and amplifies school spirit. An intentionally warm colour palette softens the industrial language of concrete soffits and exposed steel, resisting the sterile vibe common to performance sports facilities. The palette and materiality make it clear: this is not an intimidating arena, but an inclusive and welcoming hub.
At every turn, the architecture reflects the values of the community it serves: connection, flexibility, visibility, and care. Whether it's the analysis room designed for future tech integration, or the café viewing deck inviting casual spectatorship, the campus blurs boundaries between play and pause, spectator and participant.
Ultimately, the Klaff Family Sports Complex is not just an infrastructure project, it’s a built manifesto for how sports can be embedded into daily life. Future-proof, student-centred, and community-driven, it embodies the idea that great architecture listens before it speaks.
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
The Redhill Early Learning Centre is the authentic combination of ambitious educational philosophy and process- driven architectural innovation. Inspired by the Reggio Emelia approach – a philosophy that views children as active contributors and researchers within society - the architecture places
children at the centre of a collaborative learning environment. With built form operating not only as container but as active third teacher- learning happens in networks of spaces.
The design began with a trip to Reggio Emelia, Italy, to attend an International Study Group and learn from the birthplace of the philosophy. This was closely followed by workshops with stakeholders, teachers and children on the future site – an inherited platform where original slopes and trees had been erased. We listened. We took the children’s lead to settle the building down into this foreign landscape in favour of its original state. Offering a comforting embrace not only to the building, but its new inhabitants embarking on their life-long journey of education.
A South African adaptation of the Reggio philosophy was created serving as a filtered microcosm of the city - a safe and nurturing space within the heart of a bustling urban environment. Leaning on principles of osmosis, the building becomes the perfect membrane through which complex realties of the city are absorbed and subtly influence within a regulated sensory environment.
The architecture centres around an African piazza, a reinterpretation of the traditional Italian town square, designed to foster interaction and community. Under a glass roof, the piazza is wrapped in mosaic carrying motifs drawn by the children, inviting a visual exploration of the 100 languages. A kitchen offers aromas of cooking into the piazza and the opportunity to observe and participate in the preparation of healthy meals.
This vibrant heart of the school is encircled by four multi-levelled ateliers - studio spaces where boundaries between ages are softened. Learners grow within their atelier, moving up to higher floors as they advance through the school, enabling diverse age-groups to connect and build understanding
through exploration and social interaction. Each atelier houses an amphitheatre, light room, art studio and rooftop garden serving as extensions of the classroom spaces connected. This allows for both structured learning and spontaneous discovery, extended further by outdoor space.
The building is held by the undulating park. Carefully designed in collaboration with play specialists and therapists, the environment offers a wide range of play opportunities encouraging all types of movement. Various levels of play, geared to developmental skills for each age-group, are subtly
merged with indoor spaces offering a sense of freedom through exploration. Play extends from the ground level to rooftop soccer fields and bike-tracks providing dedicated zones for high-energy activities.
Attention to detail extends to every aspect of the school, from the furniture and finishes to the functioning of the layout, all designed by the architects with a child’s perspective in mind. The result is an approachable learning space that feels like a journey, delicately underwritten by meticulous organisation to support both educational and emotional development.
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
Firm: Hubo Studios
Redhill Early Learning Center
Hubo Studios
President´s Award
HOUSE EBLEN 5022
Warp D Architects
House Eblen 5022, perched on a scenic hill within Steyn City, is a striking threestorey residence that embodies sculptural architecture at its finest.
Designed in parallel with House Eblen 5021 as a father-and-son duo project both largely responsible for managing the projects, this home was born from the client’s clear vision: a bold, expressive, and highly functional living space that celebrates entertainment and form.
Inspired by the iconic Razor House in La Jolla, California, the design adopts fluid geometries, expansive glazed surfaces, and sculpted structural forms. This precedent heavily influenced the formal expression and materiality—curved beams, bespoke column profiles, and dramatic cantilevers all echo the language of sculptural modernism. The use of concrete, glass, and steel further accentuates the home's monumentality and elegance.
The spatial programme is tailored to the client’s lifestyle. The basement provides parking for six vehicles, complete with dedicated entrance and exit points to ease circulation—responding directly to the client’s request for effortless access. The ground floor is entirely dedicated to entertainment, with a vast open-plan layout capable of hosting up to 80 guests. On the first floor, private bedrooms and family
spaces are discreetly situated, taking full advantage of panoramic views while maintaining privacy.
While Steyn City regulations required screening of balconies to protect neighbouring privacy, the design reinterpreted these spaces as semi-private entertainment terraces linked to two of the bedrooms. A significant challenge was the north-facing entrance, typically the preferred direction for outdoor living. However, this constraint was transformed into an opportunity: a large, sculptural
beam on the northern façade defines the entrance and theatrically guides visitors into the home, reinforcing the architectural language. Contrasting this a series of heavy, rhythmically spaced vertical columns define the northern façade, entrance
acting as both a sculptural gesture that contrasts the large sculptural beams and a functional privacy screen.
House Eblen 5022 pushes the boundaries of suburban residential design through its sculptural form, structural innovation, and pragmatic clarity. Every aspect— from the expressive curved beams and bespoke columns to the reimagined balcony spaces—reflects a careful orchestration of aesthetic ambition and functional requirements. Despite regulatory and site-specific challenges, the design maximises allowable parameters and transforms constraints into opportunities. This project excels not only as a high-performance dwelling tailored to the client's lifestyle but also as an architectural statement of sculptural form giving in residential architecture.
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects
Firm: Warp D Architects