PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative 2024 winner revealed in the economic heartland of South Africa

Scooping second place in the competition was Grace Taylor, also from Design Time School of Interior Design (winning R37,500), with Isabella Vernes from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in third place (winning R15,000).

The PG Bison 1.618 Education Initiative is an opportunity for architecture and interior design students to take on a real-world brief, which is written into the curricula of participating tertiary institutions, and to gain recognition among industry professionals (including the expert judging panel) as they prepare to enter the working world.

“Well done to Cara and to Design Time School of Interior Design,” says Lauren Munro, marketing projects manager at PG Bison. “This is the second year in a row that Design Time School of Interior Design has scooped top honours in the competition. Cara and Anel can be exceptionally proud of the work produced. Our judges were impressed by the range of destination hotel designs submitted for this year’s brief, themed Heartland, Country of All Things.”

Top three submissions

Turner’s winning entry, titled The Eve Hotel, proposes a hotel set in the escarpment of eNtokozweni in Mpumalanga – the site of the Bokoni Tribe ruins, hypothesised to offer physical remnants of Mitochondrial Eve (a term in human genetics that refers to the most recent common female ancestor of all living humans).

“The Eve Hotel is an exploration of the mystery of the landscape left by early human civilisations,” explains Turner. “Architectural technologies set a scene for learning through compound living and passages of journey.”

Taylor, whose entry took second place, proposed a design for River Bridge Hotel on the Gourits Bridge in Gouritsmond in the Garden Route (in the Western Cape). Vernes submitted an entry titled Contradistinction, located in Namaqualand.

Embodying and illuminating the unique, meaningful and often contradictory qualities of the landscape based on three paradoxical relationships: The reverent relationship between water and life, the contrast between apparent lack and abundance and the complex relationship between human presence and natural landscape, is the inspiration behind Vernes’ artwork the Contradistinction in the Namaqualand which saw her take the third place.

“All the top three entries met the requirements of the brief – to provide a unique destination hotel experience, including public spaces and an arrival experience,” says Munro. “We also asked them to use AI as a starting point, and it’s been interesting to see how the next generation of designers and architects can incorporate these types of technologies into their everyday work. We look forward to following their careers and to seeing how they will shape the built environment of the future.”