South Africa's Carin Smuts is transforming some of Cape Town's most dangerous townships, one public project at a time
By Jesper Strudsholm
Photography by Robert Lemermeyer

Even before you reach the door to Carin Smuts’ office in one of Cape Town’s seaside suburbs, it’s clear this architect thrives on critical dialogue with the community. The evidence is on her garden wall, where someone – a neighbour, she suspects – sprayed a vicious comment to her for using corrugated iron as cladding on the extension of her office. “Blikkiesdorp,” it says – Afrikaans for “tin town.”

Smuts describes the defacement as “a dialogue with the informal settlements in which the majority of urban dwellers in South Africa are living.” The neighbourhood, however, sees the double-storeyed collection of boxes Smuts has built and painted in blue, red and gold as a potential threat to the property values in this cream-coloured suburb.

The neighbours’ irritation increased when a newspaper quoted her saying she wanted to preserve the graffiti as the building’s name. Their subsequent attempt to cover up the red letters with criss-crossing black lines only added to Smuts’ love for the ongoing dispute.

This often restless blend of dialogue and confrontation defines much of Smuts’ architecture, as well as her career. It has earned her everything from local scorn to accolades, most recently as the recipient of the 2008 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, an honour handed out annually at Villa Savoy in France.

Read the full story in the print edition of our May 2009 issue