This group of buildings is designed for destitute children, whose time spent here will be forever lodged in their memories. These children lodge here for many reasons that are always sad.

It was the architect’s ultimate aim to give lightness to the space, to design buildings around intimate places and to make time spent here more bearable. Buildings with communal functions were positioned to define and relate to the central courtyard. Colour and light create positive space and become complementary media for achieving an alternative institutional project.

There has been a conscious effort to connect indoor and outdoor space, to invite light into the interior spaces and to afford abundant views from the inside out. In addition to the windows, polycarbonate sheeting allows natural light into the spaces below and the rooms on the south side of buildings benefit from this by “borrowing” light from the passages via high internal glazed sections.

This building was a collaboration between Henri Comrie, Ora Joubert and Chris Wilkinson as co-directors of Joubert Comrie + Wilkinson Architects and Urban Designers, in association with VMR Architects