Through extensive studies taken along Canterbury Street in Cape Town, the brief was to enhance the urban fabric at The Fringe (the threshold dividing the city and district six) with an intervention. By watching the movement through Canterbury Street, it was found that there was one major direction of movement - this was the movement of people from the district six area into the city and back again. This provided an opportunity for public spaces to be imposed along the street that would be constantly activated each day through the movement of people. To realize this, each cross road along Canterbury Street was enlarged in order to create public nodes or squares. Each node had a different function that dictated the typology of buildings that opened onto it - these ranged from a cultural square to a educational square to a green square which opened up to a park. Through every day activation, these nodes start to talk to each other thereby creating a pedestrianised street enhanced as a social meeting place.

The second part to the brief was to continue this urban scheme through the addition of an opera house. The site for the opera house is chosen across the street from the Castle of Good Hope. It stretches over one street, therefore adding an enclosed nature to the already pedestrian student street/route, and opens onto two public nodes. The top node holds the entrance into a great volume of space (which is also activated by many other dramatic arts activities), adding drama to the ritual of going to the opera. The centre node acts as a buffer zone between the route through the opera house and the continued pedestrian alley. The design for this opera house takes inspiration from the castle and Cape Town’s mountainous landscape surrounding it. Inspired by the works of Louis Kahn and by observing these two elements, it showed a clear path toward the ideas of monumentality as well as timelessness. Through structure, form and material, the opera house stands to achieve both and monumental and timeless quality within the city. It pays tribute to the Castle of Good Hope as well as acting as a beacon through which to identify the castle in a fast growing city of commercial buildings.