25 october 2015, sunday

SAIA-BKIA President's Cocktail Evening & Lecture by Al Stratford

  By Wintec®

We are honoured to have been able to showcase many of our award-winning systems at this year's South African Institute of Architecture Border Kei Region President's Cocktail Evening & Lecture by our founder Al Stratford. Al was named the 28th Sophia Gray Memorial Lecture Laureate earlier this year and following this he was asked to repeat his lecture and exhibition at a special cocktail evening hosted by the South African Institute of Architecture Border Kei Region.

The evening was opened by Marlene Swinney, current SAIA-BKIA President, who introduced Al Stratford with a brief overview of his life and work. Al took the stage and jumped right into his lecture on "Reductive Innovation in Architecture". He outlined his amazing journey of becoming an Architect through a lifetime of devotion to reductive innovation and designing award-winning architectural systems.

For us at Wintec® we are inspired by people who want to make a difference. We recently came across Rolling Rhinos which is a young man's plight to raise funds in any way to contribute to the conservation of the Rhino. We saw an opportunity to auction off one of our special StratFlex® Rhino pieces, contributing all funds raised to Rolling Rhinos. These funds are passed on to their beneficiaries; Chipembere Rhino Foundation and the Kariega Foundation.

Sindile Ngonyama, the current SAIA President, opened the exhibition of Al's life and innovative systems and interior products presented by Wintec®. Sindile gave a challenging directive, "declaring a new movement demanding that those who have a true commitment to the cause of our society, must rise." He went on to say; "It is my assertion that with positive thinking men and women, applying their God given creative minds and zeal, challenges such as:

• High levels of unemployment riddling our society "Must Fall"
• Joblessness of the vast majority of our population "Must Fall"
• Loss of our scarce creative skills to other countries "Must Fall"
• Urban centres riddled with inadequate or no support bulk services infrastructure, "Must Fall"
• Sustainable solutions for our built environment, "Must Rise"

so as to be beneficial to all the peoples of this beautiful continent."

The exhibition features a creative series of large format prints representing a timeline of Al's life, work and achievements. This tactile collection of works includes; Al's full-scale architectural systems, interior products and new innovative concepts that he has been working on.