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Thamsa Donald

@bythamsa

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UCT BAS Masters @tham_donald

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3rd year ll Project03 - Strip section and elevation of my Final City Living Project, more to follow soon…. by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

✨ Recent freelance work in progress ✨
Exploring light, texture, and detail through these interior renders. Each unit has been carefully considered to balance warmth, functionality, and a sense of calm.

Swipe through to see the different spaces ! by @bythamsa

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a year ago

Trek Net Fishing
At Sunrise Beach, just east of Muizenberg, I began tracing the layered rhythms of trek-net
fishing. What first seemed like an abandoned, empty edge revealed itself as a site alive with
movement — fishermen, birds, tides, and exchanges unfolding in relation.
Through my project I’ve worked across film, animation, collage, and mapping to capture
these dynamics. My video Labour & Tide documents the embodied choreography of
fishermen hauling, sorting, and selling fish on the shore. The animation maps these flows in
plan, showing how people, fish, and birds move together in shared patterns. Collages and
traces highlight moments of exchange — between labour and livelihood, ocean and ecology,
people and place.
What emerges is not just a practice, but a system: social, economic, and ecological layers
constantly feeding into one another. This raises a key question: could the act of exchange
itself become a point of repair. @thamsa_designs_ @tham_donald taken in Muizenberg Beach by @bythamsa

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a year ago

LABOUR OF TIDES | Sunrise Beach, Muizenberg
Thamsa Donald

What would it mean for architecture to move with labour — and with the tide?

Located along the False Bay coastline between Muizenberg and Strandfontein Pavilion, this project responds to the spatial and regulatory pressures shaping trek net fishing at Sunrise Beach.

Through ethnographic fieldwork, walking, drawing, and direct engagement with fishermen, the design emerges from observation rather than imposition. Mapping revealed a precise choreography structured by tide, cooperation, and restricted access zones. What appears informal is in fact highly coordinated, adaptive infrastructure — operating without architectural support.

The project stands for visibility, access, and continuity.

It argues that coastal space must accommodate working practices that predate contemporary redevelopment and tourism economies. Rather than reinstating a fixed pavilion, the proposal introduces a mobile architectural system that moves with labour and tide.

Organised as head, body, and tail, the structure assembles and disperses according to daily workflow. It supports:

– Launching
– Sorting and cleaning
– Net repair and storage
– Selling and exchange

Timber sled bases and an integrated axle system allow relocation across sand and firmer ground, positioning architecture as responsive infrastructure rather than static object.

Atmospherically influenced by the adaptive logic of Theo Jansen, movement becomes the spatial principle. The structure clusters during exchange, stretches during transition, and returns to the parking edge after work — mirroring the sequence of arrival, pull, and distribution.

Repair here is not fixing what is broken.
It is recognising what already works.

Labour of Tides positions architecture as companion to existing practice.
It supports labour already embedded in the coastline.

Designing with the tide — not against it.

#SunriseBeach #Muizenberg #TrekNetFishing #CoastalLabour #RepairativeArchitectures #MobileInfrastructure #SouthernUrbanism #DesignWithTheTide #CapeTown @apg_uct taken in Muizenberg Beach by @bythamsa

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7 months ago

by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Technical model by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Outside amphitheatre by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Longitudinal section through site by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Exhibition space by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Floor plans + section by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Conceptual model + sketches by @bythamsa

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4 years ago

Project 04 -Landscapes of Memory/ Final Project by @bythamsa

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4 years ago