Project Collaborations

Durban International Convention Centre Arena and the Constitutional Court in Hillbrow

Mashiya Ngcobo (founder and CEO of Property Tawi) has built distinguished careers in architecture, marked by years of collaboration with some of South Africa’s most esteemed architects. Their professional journeys have included close work with visionaries like Andrew Makin, Mpho Selepe, and Janina Masojada—creative forces behind landmark projects such as the Durban International Convention Centre Arena and the Constitutional Court in Hillbrow. These experiences have not only enriched their design philosophies but have also positioned them at the forefront of contemporary South African architecture.

Container concept

Designworkshop:SA wanted to showcase the versatility of the container as a building material. It believes containers are as viable as traditional building materials and, what’s more, they do not have to be constructed from scratch, are easily transportable, affordable and modular, meaning they can be stacked on top of each other or adjoined in whichever way you please. The result: a container can be used for almost any imaginable structure.

Dunkirk all-suite Hotel (DASH), Dunkirk Estate, Salt Rock

Neatly detailed palisades front the access stairs and entrances to the units, which are entered through a courtyard and cleverly mediate the private-public interface. The spacious apartments are designed around the living spaces which open to sea and land. There is a sense of originality in this complex, tectonically sensible yet understated. The reception and restaurant, with offices and gallery over, line the road and the apartment block, arranged for best sea views, defines a triangulated courtyard off which all suites are accessed. Each suite consists of two bedrooms en suite on either side of the central dining-living space. The last is “treated like a courtyard”, to look out to sea on one side, and communal cortile on the other.

Dunkirk Beach Clubhouse, Salt Rock

Perched above its beachfront site, this clubhouse is conceived as both a pavilion and a belvedere, and is distinguished by the clarity and openness of its planning, the integration of parking and landscaping, the seamless transition between indoors and out, and the appropriately spare palette of materials. The demolition of a house on an elongated site on the beachfront of Salt Rock enabled the realisation of a clubhouse for a residential estate. A landscaped transitional space at the head of the parking area gives access to the clubhouse located on the edge of the dune. The restaurant on the ground floor opens to a lawn, and a staircase gives access to the deck above from both of which spectacular views are offered up and down the coast.