By JOHN YELD
Designs to enhance and improve two of Cape Town's notorious "blots on the landscape" - the still vacant District Six and the Disa Towers complex in Vredehoek - are among the top honours in this year's Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year Award.
Maria Aragao, a thesis student at the University of Cape Town, took top honours in the regional finals.
Aragao's entry is entitled Memorial to Absent and is a design for a public walk-in sculpture commemorating the evisceration of District Six during the apartheid government's Group Areas "slum clearance", when residents were forcibly removed and their houses destroyed.
Aragao's design will go through to the national final in March.
Runner-up in the regional competition was Leigh Hanekom with a design for a Guggenheim Museum on the breakwater at Table Bay harbour.
Third prize went to Kylie Richards for her entry The Architecture of Skin, a project that addresses the problems of the Disa Park towers on the slopes of Devil's Peak.
Aragao won R5 000 for her efforts. Hanekom and Leigh received R3 000 and R2 000, respectively.
Bokang Lethola won the special category for the best use of brick with his design of a vertical tower to create cost-effective living spaces in Cape Town.