In Joburg, all eyes will be on the 15- to 20-year roll-out of the R84 billion Modderfontein redevelopment, which kicks off next year and is set to house 100 000 people over 1 600 hectares of undeveloped land.
Nadia Tromp – this year’s winner of the Mbokodo award for women in the arts – will have a big year too as designer of four hospitals as part of Johannesburg’s Corridors of Freedom development.
Durban’s big news for 2016 will be the R3.1 billion Oceans Umhlanga development, which starts construction next year and will feature two beachfront skyscrapers with 460 sea-facing apartments and a shopping mall with 100 stores, including the likes of Versace, Burberry, Armani and Paul Smith.
In the Mother City, the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa should come to completion by the end of the year, along with a host of other flashy, big-budget projects included in the V&A Waterfront developments. Work has just begun on the R700 million Canal District mixed-use suburb.
This year will see the announcement of the 2015/16 AfriSam-Saia Award for Sustainable Architecture + Innovation, one of the biggest local prizes in architecture. The Aga Khan Award, the Oscars of architecture, also comes around next year.
Big news abroad will be the opening of superstar architect David Adjaye’s Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, as well as the Venice Architecture Biennale, which will soon announce who will be designing the South African Pavilion.